What makes where you live more than a shelter or a place to put your belongings - or your “stuff” as George Carlin once spoke so eloquently about? What makes it a home? What makes it so hard to leave when it becomes obvious that a person can no longer stay? There has to be more to it than a fear of the unknown or not wanting to go through what it takes to move - even though I know we can all agree that moving is basement level on the fun scale.
I had so many discussions with mom trying to convince her to move from her third floor apartment to a lower floor. The winters in Illinois are long and not stair-user friendly; she often told me how worried she was that she would slip and fall on some ice that the salt hadn’t reached. She knew how dangerous it was, she was worried about it, and yet she refused to even entertain the idea of moving. And some of the reasons she gave me? I could not roll my eyes hard enough (on the inside, of course, because that would definitely get me nowhere).
Why on earth was she so stubborn??
I know I’m far from alone in wondering what in the world is going through our parents' heads when they won’t listen to an idea that, to us, makes so much sense and is safer and easier and one hundred other things I could list. Let’s face it - what happens to our parents not only happens to them, it happens to us as well. We want them to be okay; we don’t want them to be hurt or scared or alone and when we get that phone call it can be one of the most frightening and helpless feelings in the world.
I get it. When it comes to where our parents live, it’s hard to think of leaving what they’re used to. Maybe they’ll even have to leave their friends and the city, town, or state where they’ve spent a large part of their lives. Routines and familiar places are the things that make us feel centered and comfortable. But when it becomes increasingly obvious that something has to change due to a risk of well-being or health, why is it so hard to leave?
I didn’t have a good answer until I watched a certain reality show.
COVID-19 has changed a lot of things. In the early days, when everything seemed wrong and uncertain we, and almost everyone else in the world, started exploring Netflix. We don’t usually watch reality shows but we came across one called “Win the Wilderness” and, since we had nowhere to go and nothing else we wanted to do, we took a look.
Let’s see if I can give you a quick overview: In 1986 Duane Ose took advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 which was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln and remained active for one hundred twenty-four years until it was repealed in 1976. However, luckily for Duane, homesteading was still allowed in Alaska until 1986.
Duane found a plot of land located fifteen miles outside of Denali Park and over one hundred miles from the nearest road and named it Ose Mountain. Not too long after, he met his wife Rena and for the next thirty years they cut logs, cleared land, and built their home together.
Living off the grid worked well for the couple until they started having health issues in their seventies - the Alaska wilderness was getting to be too difficult for them to live in much longer. Since their respective children were unable to take over and keep the home in the family, the Oses took an offer to be the subject of a reality show whose main objective was to find the next owners of their home.
Over the six episodes of the show, we got to know Duane and Rena and see just how much their home and the life they built together meant to them. They were just as you’d expect - no nonsense, hard working, and resourceful. As they warmed up to the camera we caught little glimpses of their shared humor as well as their deep love for each other and the life they had built together. As they did the final walk through of their home and walked out through their door for the last time, I felt a heaviness in my heart for them. Yes, they knew it was time to go but this was their home and this home was their story - just looking at their faces and the tears in their eyes, I was finally able to better understand why it’s so hard to leave.
Bill and I sat on our back porch that evening looking out at our backyard where there used to be a swingset and an inflatable pool for our children to play in. There are memories of puppies who grew up to be the best dogs and then grew old, birthday parties, and eventually a pool full of our kids and their friends. This house is where our daughter got to pick out the color she wanted the walls of her room to be and this is the house we brought our newborn son home to. This is our kitchen where our son-in-law told us how much he loves our daughter and asked us for our blessing before he asked her to marry him. To think of having to one day walk out the door for the last time - well, I’d rather not. We’ve lived here for twenty-seven years out of the thirty-two we’ve been married and this house is our history.
We’ll always have pictures and, I hope, memories and I know we don’t need a house to remind us of all that. But whenever I see the tiny little Christmas tree our daughter drew on the wall between her room and her brother’s I can’t help but smile. If or when we go, I’ll just cut out that part of the wall and take it with me. It’s not the house so much, it’s the life we built in it.
