Is this rude?

This is an “obituary” that was in the county paper  for the first house that Jim and I ever owned together.  Maybe I am feeling sad and a little emotional over it being torn down, a little nostalgic trip down memory lane, but this felt to me all wrong.   It seems rude to me.  I kind of want to set the record straight.  Jim and I put so much money, time, paint, yard work, heart, tears, sweat, worry, grief, thought, planning and about 5 years worth of our lives into that house.  Do I want an acknowledgement for that?  No. I don’t.  But it seems like an unnecessary way to go about things to me.  The people who bought this house came into some hard times I understand. One of them passed away, one got sick and went into long term care.  Where was this article’s writer when the house was sitting there, with the porch falling off?  With the vines growing up the outside?  Did they offer to help?   I doubt it.  I had noticed the deterioration for years.  As a matter of fact, Adreinne lives about 2 blocks away, and I purposefully never drove by when I went to her house, because I hated seeing it.   I did nothing to help either.  Seemed like not my circus, not my monkey - but I also kept my mouth shut upon the family deciding to demolish it.   

It also brings back memories of what it was like to live in that house.  Every single time we did anything to it, a gang of neighbors came over to tell us we shouldn’t do that.  “Oh I see you hired a crew to cut down the trees in the back yard!- you’ll be sorry next summer when you have no shade!”   Uhhh, thanks for your opinion, but both trees were dead and the limbs were falling into the roof every time the wind blew.  “Oh I see you’re painting the front porch - why aren’t you adding colors?  Victorian houses had colors in the gingerbread parts?”  Umm thanks but I didn’t want to go that route for now.  It went on and on. Meanwhile we were struggling to keep warm in the winter, (thus the new heating/air system) and every spare dime we had was going into making it a nice place to raise our kids.  But nobody ever seemed to care that we were trying to salvage it, just that they didn’t agree with the design choices.  Part of why we grew weary and sold it.  

It was 1995, we were told that the rental house we were living in was sold and we had a few weeks to move.  We drove around with a freakishly bad realtor looking at houses, when we drove past this house, it was abandoned.  It was not for sale, but I felt like it wanted us to buy it, so I asked.  The realtor told me she could get the owners to sell it, and quoted me a price.  The next week, sure enough, they had agreed to sell, but for about $10,000 more than she quoted. Still well within the price range we were looking for, so we jumped in with both feet.  I was pregnant with Mallory and Madison and I had grand plans for making it a home for our little family.  And it was a nice home.   We made it a comfy, warm sweet little house to raise our kids in, and we added not 2, but 4 kids while we lived there.  I have fond memories of living there.   Jim’s brother and his family lived down the street, I very much enjoyed having a front row seat to watching our niece and nephew grow.  The problem with a fixer-upper is, we soon learned, that it is never finished.  One project just leads to another, and then another until you feel like you will drown.  When we tried to upgrade the electrical, ended up having to gut the upstairs as a result, and ended up getting sued by the contractor we hired, I think it is safe to say Jim and I both lost our spirit for old house renovations.  We moved out when Cameron was 7 months old.  We spent the next year trying to sell the house in a bad market.  We did not get any of the money we put in back out, but sometimes you just have to cut your losses.  I have never missed living in that house since we moved, but I was sad to see it torn down.  I guess my secret hope was that someone would finish the work we started, and love it for the old beauty that it was.