She didn’t recognize the house, not at first. But for some reason looking at it filled her with sadness. Then with happiness. Maybe it was nostalgia, she thought, the combination of sadness and happiness when you’re leaving something beautiful and you have to watch it go. The house certainly wasn’t beautiful, not at first glance at least. It was a plain two story, covered with cedar shingles and slumping a bit with age, much like the woman herself. She sat in the back seat of the car like a child, face split with wrinkles and hands shaking as she pushed herself upright to get a better vantage point. There was something familiar about the house, but like most memories these days, she just couldn’t put her finger on it. Across the lawn, a procession of college-aged boys stumbled under the weight of heavy cardboard boxes as they loaded them into two moving vans that were parked in the cracked driveway. She remembered holding similar brown boxes, lugging them into this very house back when it was filled with possibilities, not the empty shell that she saw before her now. A man had been behind her, he was handsome she recalled, with deep dimples and eyes that sparkled brightly like the ocean when hit with sunlight. He had wrapped his arms around her waist and swung her around the empty house, holding her in a way that said I’ll never let you go. Where was that man now?  

The boys continued to file from the house, carrying boxes and boxes of belongings that she did not remember owning. Stuff that must have belonged to a stranger. But something caught her eye; a pink, fleece rabbit that was hanging carelessly out of one of the boxes. It was dingy and brownish now with one of its button eyes swinging by a thread, but she remembered a time when it was pink, soft and new, just like the baby to whom it had once belonged. The baby was so small, it didn’t seem quite real, but there it was, a tiny piece of new life that she had created. It was a girl, she recalled, but no name came to mind. However, she knew that the little girl had a beautiful name, the kind you want to say again and again because of the wonderful way it feels when it rolls off your tongue.

Suddenly a dozen snapshots flashed through her mind. Entering the brightly lit kitchen while inhaling the scent of that night’s dinner. Sitting on the worn sofa with a fire barely warming the tips of her feet. Standing on the front porch with a camera, snapping pictures of her beautiful girl who had grown up so fast. And now, sitting in this strange car, watching lamps and boxes of books and dishes being packed up and shipped away, she saw that the house had become nothing but an empty shell. Some part of her realized that she, too, had become an empty shell. An empty shell of a women and an empty shell of a house with all their memories boxed away.