Unknown Territory.

This isn't a place I haven't been before. This is the house I grew up in for 7 years of my life. My mother took me into the spare room (which used to be my brother's) and showed me some things she brought down from Nan and Pop's house. Immediately, I have a minor panic attack. My throat tightens to prevent from crying, I get hot, I get dizzy, and I just want to walk away, but I can't. She shows me things like photograph pencils (OLD) and watercolors, paints, and some other things. I run my fingers across the box of never-opened watercolors that my Pop probably bought to try out, got ill, and never could.

I feel like a stranger here. I love my family, but I knew this weekend was going to be tough. Who wants to go through a house that belonged to two family members you loved dearly who were here one day and gone the next? Who wants to go through it alone? Already, as I sit here typing this, I tear up at the thought of going up to "that" house. This was the whole reason I came down here. Call it "closure" if you will or some other "grieving" tag. It will be one of the last times I come to that house. The only other time I will be there will be to pick up furniture that I am moving somewhere up where I am. I don't know where yet - storage unit - no room for it now (woodburned coffee table with a mark on it from a candle Pop put on it, etc.)

I won't ever be at the house again watering the flowers, mowing the yard, having dinner with my grandparents, bringing up a new dog to meet them as they pet him/her from their bed. I won't ever sit with my Nan and watch (temporarily) NASCAR that she loved. I won't sit there with Pop and watch John Wayne like we used to. It will just be another house put on the market for sale. An empty shell of a life that once was.