gone

it's gone.

yesterday, my cousin e-mailed me to let me know that the house that i grew up in in bakersfield burned down to the ground.

my papa built that house with his own hands. it stood for more than 40 years. my father walked through that house. our family gatherings happened at that house. more than half my life was spent in that house. it was the backdrop for so many things that i remember. things i really enjoyed remembering. and it's gone now.

secretly, ever since the house was sold outside of the family, i hoped to get rich somehow and buy that house back. maybe even buy back the whole neighborhood of a couple blocks and get it back the way it was. take care of it like anything you love.

what i really wanted was to buy my home back. that was the only place in my hometown that i considered to be home. i love my mom, and my mom loves me. of course, her home has been open to me and what's hers is mine. but that place that burned down to the ground? i took ownership of it. that was mine. when life became hard, that was the place of comfort that i would want to go back to in my mind.

even though the house itself was no longer a home once my grandfather passed away, it was nice for to be able to go there and see furniture in place where i always remembered it being. cousins moved in and out for a few years. some took better care of it than others. i had to divorce it from my heart after awhile though.

not two or three christmases ago, some family was living there and somehow all the life and love seemed drained from it. no lights were on anywhere inside or outside the house except in the couple rooms where people were staying. the house wasn't the hallways were cold. the family room was empty. the kitchen was dead. i cried then because i think i knew it was over. it was like seing someone you love dying and not being able to do anything about it. and that was the last time i was inside the house.

the house was put up for sale. someone else bought it, changed the color, took off the awnings, and did whatever else they wanted to it. i didn't ever actually see it in that state. after a certain point, it just hurt to much to drive down the street. and see the architectural equivalent of having the ex-girlfriend you couldn't hold on to dating some other man who isn't treating her right anyway.

my heart sank a little when i heard that it burned down. it grieved me like any other death. but at the same time, i was relieved. almost in the same way that, though heavily grieved, i was relieved when it was official that the my papa's (and thereby my own) suffering was over. and i find it more ironic that the house burned down on the exact anniversary date of my grandfather's death, 7 years later.

i think i avoided bakersfield in total because it hurt to see that place i loved in ruins. but it's over now. i hope no one was hurt in the blaze. the paper says there was about $50,000 of damage done. i hope they don't rebuild the place. i'd like them to level it and maybe build something else, maybe not. i don't think you can get more closure than this. so now, maybe i can work on establishing myself a home that no one can take from me.

it's alright.