Lost the House

I guess the sale of Mom's house has hit me harder than I expected it to. The deal finally closed Tuesday, and I've been in kind of a funk ever since. Yes, I did get a lot of the miscellaneous small stuff from the house—a green chair, a mirror, and some plants. No, I didn't particularly like the way Mom decorated things. She tended to be a hybrid of 1950's chic (she really did like aluminum drinking glasses) and Better Homes & Gardens antique collector. But dammit, the place was my home base for my entire adult life. It was a tasteless split-level in a suburb that pretty much defined the Washington sprawl, but it was also a place of natural beauty, of enormous silences, and of long memories. The spare room of Mom's new apartment just isn't the same, even with furniture from the old place.