Mum's house - once my home for a few years - is different. I took a few minutes to think about all the work tanais and I did on the place, about good things that happened there, about sitting by the fire in the front room with the cats and getting the call asking why I hadn't turned up for the first day of a job they forgot to write to me about, about Cicero sleeping on my record deck in the sun. We've done a lot of work clearing over so many months and mum was always moving stuff around so seeing it cluttered up felt normal, but seeing it empty, closing the door and leaving for the last time - that was an ending and it leaves me feeling a little bruised, a little slow and without enough energy for slogging through the to do list before we head off on the next trip.
Some of this may be down to having a fun evening out with friends yesterday and coming home to find some cipy had gone astray and needed digging out and resending; meaning a late night before our early start. But although I'm keeping and celebrating pieces of it on my own life with Simon, today was the end of the collection of places and objects and memories that my mum lived her life in.
