The wedding was just incredibly joyful. It was a sunny day which was quite a blessing considering it rained all week. Here is a picture of me walking my baby girl down the aisle (I feel like singing Butterfly Kisses, but my kids don't like the song) and about to hand her to her new husband. You can also see all of the Quigg girls in the second photo (The Three Little Quiggs as they were called in elementary school).
Going back to the house bit, we had all of our girls at the house one final time. We did see Bethany in here wedding dress come down the stairs. She got ready in her old room. All of the kids were here and it was a zoo. But a fitting end to this chapter of our lives.
As the girls parted the house, I asked them to say their final goodbyes to our house in Aurora. All of them shared that while they cherish the memories in that house, there was no special attachment to the physical dwelling. Ashley decided she would take one final walk through the deep woods in the back, but the mosquitoes overrode her sense of nostalgia. No crying, no regrets. Chapter over, next chapter. For them, they had already started their next chapter long before. This stopped being their home long ago. So maybe I was thinking too much attachment to the house. All three girls are renting now so maybe a sense of ownership of a home isn't there anyway. It is just a roof over our head.
So often we associate memories with physical things like a house. We think it is the object when it is the moment, the relationship, the event. We get together and we say "remember when". Houses and objects can be preserved as memory bearers. I remember how upset I was when in college my parents sold our house. How could they? But yet, I still remember those childhood places and they are permanently etched in my brain while I have physical life. I still drive by our old house in Chagrin Falls where we lived for three years. I remember catching salamanders in the woods behind the house. I remember the farm next to Gurney elementary school. I remember going to the corner gas station with my dime and getting a coke (yes, I am that old). That house has long been gone, but the memories remain. My brother when visiting for the wedding took a nostalgia trip to our childhood homes.
We will greatly miss our house in Aurora and we loved living there for 13 years, but we were prepared to move on. We didn't cling to staying there when we easily could have. I found today that it was not nearly as tough for me to leave the house that we raised our kids in and we lived so long in. We took one final walk of the neighborhood we loved so much but with no regret. I think we reached a great demarcation point to move on. And move on, we did. We will however always cling to the memories which never go away. But the physical house now belongs to someone else and Debsue and I are really good with that.
One final note - the house was sold to a family with four young kids. We took special joy in the fact that this house will now become a home for another young family.
So we are preparing for new memories. This home is our next launching off point until God tarries us elsewhere.
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