When my Mum and
Dad were killed I inherited the family house and as a grown-up friend of mine
rightly pointed out once you own a house you are never going to short of things
to spend your money on! It was a big decision to start changing the house from
how Mum and Dad had left it: partly because it was like accepting that they
would never be coming back again.
It was during the
summer term of my first year at university that I decided that I was going to
live in the house with three friends for the second year of my course. In early
September I had various painters, plumbers and electricians coming and going
all the time and as I didn't like to leave them in the house on their own I was
pretty much been chained to the house myself. Getting the right mix of workmen
in the house at the right time seemed hard for the project manager to
co-ordinate but as I was paying for the jobs and not the time it didn't cost me
anything extra. The biggest change was to Mum and Dad's old bedroom. By the
time all the work was done it really felt like "my room" - it would
have been too full of memories to have it as my room but with their
furniture.
Most of the other
internal changes were fairly cosmetic and from the outside the house doesn’t
look that different. Neither Mum nor Dad were interested in gardening so the
“low maintenance” spaces in front and behind the house are almost
unchanged.
What feels to
have changed most are the neighbours. If I think about the three houses on
either side of my house only two are still occupied by people who will remember
Mum and Dad. Two of the others have relative new comers and two houses have
tenants living in them, who are just renting the house while they look for a
house to buy. Without exception all six houses are being lived in by
professional couples with children or retired people with children who have
“flown the nest”. So my house with 4 students living in it is very much the
exception!
There also isn’t
much neighbourhood spirit. Like so many British people my neighbours all seem
to keep themselves to themselves and while there is no animosity between the
different households there doesn’t seem to be much friendship either.
At the moment I
don’t have any plans to sell the house. I will certainly want to live here for
the year 2014-2015 while I am doing my PGCE course – what happens after that
rather depends on where, or if, I am able to get a teaching job. While I am
thinking about it I need to say that I was amazed, but thrilled, to get first
class honours in my degree. I know some people, especially Mum’s sister and
Dad’s brother automatically assumed that getting a better degree than I had
expected would mean a change of career path but at the moment I am still planning to
start my new course in September.
Important note
for readers – this “post-bereavement” blog follows on from my earlier “double
bereavement” blog that can still be found at
http://darknesslight1.blogspot.co.uk/
No comments:
Post a Comment