Friday, we sold the last forty acres of Hodge Ski Lodge. Mother died two years and nine months ago, and we are just now settling everything up. Sort of. There are still taxes at the end of the year. Oddly, however, this was not an emotional event for me. Relief more aptly describes what I felt. But it has not always been relief.
At the leading of my sister, we started cleaning up at Mom's house two years before Dad died. Mom lived three years and nine months after he passed. It still took us eight months to get the house cleaned out, patched up, and put on the market. The day we closed on 422 West Harding Street, I drove around town and cried. That house had been a part of my life for over sixty years, and it seemed impossible that I would never go back there. I grew up there, watched our parents grow old there, and of course we had all those family gatherings there. It was the hub of our family and now it was gone.
Then we started on the land, a long and cumbersome process. I took phone calls, showed the land, got stood up over and over, and had numerous texts and phone conversations with my brother. And I learned a lot. I learned that land realtors, which we did not use, are an aggressive bunch that scratch and claw for business. That is OK. That's the American way, but they called and called and called after seeing the land posted in The Mississippi Market Bulletin.
Also, I learned how deceiving looks can be. Several times I thought the sale was in the bag only to have the people I was sure would buy, disappear like someone who owed the Mafia money. Then, on this last forty acres, my brother asked me after I showed the land to the people who bought it if I thought they were good prospects. My answer was simple: no.
After an unsuccessful year, we lowered the price and divided the land. Finally, we sold ninety-three acres, the heart of the place. This is the part that has the cabin, the two ponds, and where I did most of my hunting. Although I do not hunt much anymore, I still drove out there, parked at the cabin, and ran the gravel roads. To lose this was devastating to me. As I told my wife, I always had a place to go. And my memories there were/are stacked as high as the sky itself.
We still had two forty-acre blocks, but it was not the same anymore. When we sold the first of those forty-acre patches, the emotional impact was not as hard as before. It was like an open door was beginning to close. I suppose it is what people mean when they refer to "closure." I was ready for it all to be done, to not have to deal with that anymore, to move on with life.
July the 17th, my sister, Carol, and I met at a lawyer's office in Greenville to close on the final forty. Our siblings did their part via emails and notary republics. This particular sale was the culmination of showing the land, numerous phone calls, meeting with a neighboring land owner, a legal easement, a survey, two sales contracts (both of which expired), and finally the deal was done.
My brother sent me this text the morning of the closing:
"Although I am anxious to close on the N40, I am more emotional about this than all the others. This is the last physical link between all of us. It is also the last part of Roger and Jo Ann's legacy. The final step in the liquidation of a legacy."
Although I understand his sentiments, this one was not emotional for me. The feeling, as I said before, was relief. It's over. No more calls, no more trips to show the land, no more explanations and aggravations, no more hoping this is the one.
My wife and I recently bought a house and moved. Not long ago, Penny asked our daughter how she felt about us selling the house on Monroe. Baby Girl's reply was, "You can sell the property, but the memories remain. You don't sell the memories."
That is a pretty mature way to view it. This whole process has helped me to learn to let go, to keep the memories but to let the stuff go. Penny and I still have stuff at Monroe. This is now our open door. I have already let go of things that I would never have let go of if I had not had this experience with the house and the land in Carroll County. Right now, I am contemplating selling a couple of more items that I would never have dreamed of before all this. But life has changed, I have changed, and it is time to move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment