"It's August and my mom is moving. My dad passed away a little less than a year ago, and after a slog of a winter living in the house they once shared, Mom decided that she wouldn't tolerate another one. So she found a townhouse close to my sister's house: small, airy, and bright. It was perfect. It was also empty."
"So Mom hired a moving company to pack up all of the shit that we didn't throw out, and truck it 40 minutes due east to her new abode. I'm here in the old house now, and it's been virtually emptied. All of the heavy furniture is either gone or draped in moving blankets. All of the tables are barren of décor. The pantry contains nothing but a couple of boxes of cereal and Mom's beloved Oreo Thins."
"The only sign that my family used to live in this house is the stairway leading up to what used to be me and my brother's old bedroom. When my parents moved in back in 1991, they decided to decorate this stairway with dozens of framed action shots of themselves, their children, and eventually their grandchildren. They christened it the sports wall."
A mother moves out of the family home less than a year after her husband's death, choosing a small, airy townhouse near her daughter's house. A moving company packed and transported decades of belongings forty minutes away, leaving the original house largely emptied of furniture and décor. The pantry contains only a few boxes of cereal and Oreo Thins. The stairway remains lined with dozens of framed action photographs documenting fishing trips, skiing with an Olympic champion, international rowing, and a canoe voyage to Hudson Bay. Those images form a multigenerational sports wall that preserves family accomplishments and memories amid the emptying house.
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