Tomorrow we hand over the keys. I'm not sure exactly how this will be carried out, for example whether one or more solicitors will appear on the doorstep (it won't be the purchaser as he is in London). But by one o'clock, or shortly thereafter, presumably this event will have taken place and we will depart forever the house where I, my wife, our son and our dog have lived, for 22, 15, 13 and 3 years respectively. My mother lived here till I drove her to her final stay in the nursing home in Dalkey, where she died 5 years ago, in February 2012.
The place is thick with memories, all the starker since we removed the pictures and most of the furniture. When we talk the tall walls smart with echoes. Yet I feel quite detached. It doesn't seem real. And in that way it is like a death, too momentous to be assimilated till one hears the last breath and sees the coffin; in this case something of a reversal as the coffin will only become evident when we're installed inside it (i.e. the new home).
