Ventilation

My brother just emailed me about the progress towards selling our family house. The market hasn't gotten any better, so we'll be lucky to get a fraction of what it is worth, but we can't afford to keep it either. In the same email he let us know that my uncle will auction off the 100+ acres of my grandparents' (remarkably still very valuable) farmland to help pay for my dementia-burdened grandma's care. She still lives in the house with a full-time caregiver, and they've tapped out her other assets. Strapped and strapped. My brother added with a slice of merry irony that my grandma is about to be richer than she has ever been.

Something about the email has rattled me. I'm saddened to lose so much of our family in such a swift swoop. I know this might sound crazy (remember that my husband is really REALLY into the Old Testament), but I also felt this really sharp pang of literally losing our homeland. My dad's family has farmed that area for something like 150 years. My mom's family for at least half that long. I keep thinking about the dreams and goals they had for their families - build up a home, a farm, a livelihood, a legacy, an inheritance. An inheritance that we can't keep. A birthright that we have to sell. It's weird. It feels old-school. It feels like we're letting them down.

I imagine that they would be sad to know that the house and property that they clung to by the skin of their teeth some years, that they worked and enjoyed and kept so welcoming for so many people for so many years will be sold for a song in desperation. My grandpa would "roll over in his grave" if he knew that the farm that he loves will be sold to non-family. And maybe even non-farmers.

Anyway, I feel sad for it today. I feel like grieving it. I feel like wishing it didn't have to be this way. It will be a relief to not have to worry about the house anymore. The relief of a sad sigh.