My old house in WI is for sale again. I think this is by the people who bought it from us four years ago.

Friends told us, then we found it listed on Zillow. The advantage there is that we could see the MLS pictures.

Wow. That was hard. Everything was different.

New paint colors. I mean, every wall in that five bedroom house had been repainted. The vaulted living room wall. The cozy family room. The tall kitchen. Every bedroom.

New flooring. Beautiful wood kitchen cabinets – painted! A new walk-in closet, though I can’t quite figure out which room that is.

A workout room in the old hobby room. A study where my son’s bedroom used to be.

Each bedroom reconfigured. Strange large paintings on the walls. New bathroom fixtures and shower curtains.

Everything that could be changed… was.

They really made it their own. And erased us in the process.

I was surprised by how sad I felt.

Why would I have that emotional response? I mean, it wasn’t my house anymore. We sold it to another family. And they made it their own.

Maybe it just felt like the end of something. Not that we can ever go back in time, nor should we. Life moves forward.

But change is hard. And this was hard evidence of change.

The evergreens in the backyard had been replaced. There was a trampoline near the gardens.

It had all been redone.

Have I been redone? Am I different than I was four years ago? Yes. “Time marches on.”

And so part of me still grieves the move from WI, all these years later. It was the end of an era, of parenting kids at home. The start of our empty nest. Life with just the two of us now. First in FL, now in VA. What would make me think that WI would stay the same? We didn’t.