Empty Room

Today, husband and I have driven the M20, M25, M3, M27 to Lyndhurst in the New Forest for the last time. We will spend the weekend, and then drive home on Sunday, for the last time.

My parents retired here in 1985, from Kent and we have spent the last 30 years, visiting regularly, bringing our children and our foster children (thank goodness for tolerant parents) for holidays and weekends over and over again. When my father died suddenly in 1998, I visited Mum weekly, staying overnight for the first year, then gradually bi weekly until by 2000, I was able to come down monthly, with my sister and brother also doing roughly the same, so that she always had one of us.

My children have wonderful memories of their holidays here.

Mum passed away last April, and so we have to sell the house. It has been both a wonderful trip down memory lane, and a sad journey through some of them for my brother and me clearing the house. We discovered that Mum was a hoarder, we even found her wedding dress.

Now, the house has sold and the sale is completed next Friday. So, my brother and his partner and myself and husband will finish the last remnants of clearing, say goodbye to the wonderful friends we have made, and shut the door for the last time.