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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To feel sad about the loss of my childhood home?

52 replies

AngryFeet · 12/12/2013 11:00

Feeling sad today. I know it is time to move on and my parents needed to sell their house but today a new family move into my family home of 32 years and I feel very tearful. We moved there when I was 3 and it has been a wonderful home with so so many amazing memories. I even lived there with my own family for a few years as my own parents moved down to the coast 8 years ago.

My little brother was born there, I met my very best friend in the world in the garden the first day we moved in (she was our neighbour for 16 years), so many parties and happy times and I will never go inside it again. Never sit on the terrace with the views of fields and London in the distance.

I really didn't expect to feel this upset. I kept telling people it was no big deal and "it is just bricks and mortar" all the important things in that house (my family and friends) are still all in my life. Why does it suddenly feel like I have lost something huge?

OP posts:
Rockinhippy · 12/12/2013 11:16

YADNBU

I thinks it's quite a normal reaction TBH, it was a constant part if your whole life, so why wouldn't you grieve it's loss like an old friend.

I remember feeling the same when my grandparents house was sold - my parents moved around a lot, so I never had the same attachment to any house we lived in, but Nana & Grandas house was a constant in my life & I was shocked at how much I grieved when it was finally sold

Be kind to yourself, you are allowed to grieve this loss Flowers

Workberk · 12/12/2013 11:18

It's a massive constant in your life and now it's being taken away - give yourself time to grieve it. YANBU to feel sad, but also how lovely for you to have had that constant all your life so far. (In the last 32 years I've lived in around 19 different houses across 5 very different regions and as a result don't feel I have a base)

JoinTheDots · 12/12/2013 11:21

YANBU, when we sold my parents house (after they both passed away) a house they have built themselves on land they purchased after they got married, where they raised their family, and I lived until I was 28 (in a caring capacity for my elderly and ill mother, at the end) it was very sad.

It was brought by a developer, who changed the entire layout, and landscaped the garden (from lawn and beds, to gravel and low maintenance shrubs) and then tried to sell it. I was so tempted to view it - but could never have afforded it, and didn't like the new look anyway. He failed to sell, and I think he is still there. I have to drive past it regularly as I still live in the same village and I feel loss every time I do.

It is only bricks and mortar, but it is also memories, cues and emotions you relate back to being there.

Weegiemum · 12/12/2013 11:28

Totally understand!

My grandparents bought their house in 1946, we lived there from 1971-1977, my Granpa died there, and Gran eventually sold the house when she couldn't cope any more in 2005. Sixty years!

It really felt like the end of an era. I cried buckets. She was very matter of fact about it, but she always was.

When she sold it she didn't accept the highest bid (Scottish system), but sold it to the second highest bidder as they were a young opulence expecting heir first child and wanted a family home!

NoComet · 12/12/2013 11:34

YANBU
My GPs house was demolished to build something more suited to the size of it's garden,

Utterly sensible and far better than building lots of boxes, but still so many Christmases and other school holidays were spent there Sad

( fortunately, it's a odd line of houses built out into the green belt, so I don't think there could be permission to build lots of houses).

Original poster
AngryFeet · 12/12/2013 11:35

Yes the one thing I am happy about is that my parents didn't sell to one of the many 60-something baby boomer couples that offered. It has gone to a lovely family with 3 very young children (a 3 year old and twin 3 month old boys). We left the old swing set and playhouse in the garden as they wouldn't have fit in our new place and are in fab condition. So I can comfort myself that a new family will create more happy memories there.

OP posts:
echt · 12/12/2013 11:48

Gosh, didn't realise the 60+ bracket buyers were pariahs.Hmm

I wonder how this would have sounded had you been chuffed not to sell to those on benefits. Or poofs.

Original poster
AngryFeet · 12/12/2013 11:52

Oh do fuck off echt. I mean that it is a family sized home and I think that a young family should live in it. Thanks for shitting all over my thread when I really needed it.

OP posts:
echt · 12/12/2013 11:59

Not addressing the point though, are you? A nasty snipe at a stereotype of older buyers.

Swanbridge · 12/12/2013 12:04

Come on echt - a) she's feeling sad, no need to kick her and b) she's pleased the house has gone to another family with young children to make more happy growing up memories there. No doubt she'd be equally pleased if the adults in that family were a gay or lesbian couple or in their 60s but caring for their grandchildren.

dotty2 · 12/12/2013 12:04

There was no need for that echt, the OP just meant that it was nice for her to think of another family living there. It's just a comforting feeling, and a perfectly reasonable thing to say!

Ephiny · 12/12/2013 12:08

So it's actually childfree people who you think should be discriminated against in the housing market? Just when I was thinking I hadn't seen that attitude on MN for a while. Thanks for that Hmm.

Rockinhippy · 12/12/2013 12:09

Do you want salt & vinegar with that chip on your shoulder echt Hmm

echt · 12/12/2013 12:09

What the OP said was she was glad it wasn't sold to 60-something baby boomers, and I picked her up on it. Why pick on buyers because of their age? When did that get to be OK?

verytellytubby · 12/12/2013 12:11

I felt EXACTLY the same when my parents sold ours. I still feel a pang when I drive down the road 5 years on!

Rockinhippy · 12/12/2013 12:12

Jeezus H Christ -!some people really need to lighten up & find something REAL to worry about Shock - perhaps you would rather the house went to a property developer Hmm

Hope you are okay OP & take no notice OP

some people just get bitter & twisted in their dotage Grin

echt · 12/12/2013 12:13

rockinhippy, you'd get further by engaging with the facts instead of making assumptions about me.

JugglingUnwiselyWithBaubles · 12/12/2013 12:14

Ahh, I can completely understand. I've been sorry to see some homes sold and that's just in our wider family. MY DP's nearly moved recently but decided to stay put in the end, in the house they've had since I was a child.
Hold on to the memories, and treasure the people who are still in your life.
There's a great poem about losing things ... something about "I lost a whole continent" (written as a list of lost things over a life-time)
It's very well written and moving.
Will see if Prof Google can find it for me ....

harticus · 12/12/2013 12:15

When I sell my house I am only going to sell it to some lovely 60+ babyboomers.

I hate the thought of a young family in here fucking it up and annoying my neighbours. Grin

YouAreMyFavouriteWasteOfTime · 12/12/2013 12:17

gosh we are all different aren't we. I am in a very similar situation and could not care less about the bricks and mortar.

you still have your family and friends and that is what matters.

wonderstuff · 12/12/2013 12:19

My grandparents home was sold a couple of weeks ago, I was really sad. The house was bought new in the 1940s, it's just always been a place my family have been, somewhere with so many childhood memories.

I've got photos though, and some things from the house to remind me, but sad to think I'll never wander round the beautiful garden again.

echt · 12/12/2013 12:20

Not quite sure why I am told to fuck off, have a chip on my shoulder and am assumed to be in my dotage. As if to be older is some disadvantage.

The idea that I would favour a property developer taking over a family house would be ludicrous if you knew my efforts to preserve family dwellings where I live. But you don't.

I stand by my objection to the OP lazily labelling older would- be buyers.

dotty2 · 12/12/2013 12:21

Even though my parents moved when I was in my early 20s (and I actually lived with them for a bit in the house they moved to), and have moved again since then, I still regularly have dreams in which I am back with them in my childhood home. It wasn't a lovely house by any means (actually small and cold and not at all attractive), but it's very deep in my psyche. I totally understand your sense of loss.

DameDeepRedBetty · 12/12/2013 12:24

I couldn't bear to go near our old family house for a couple of years. It's four bedrooms in an idyllic, very isolated setting, but still less than two hours from London, and most of the similar houses have been going to weekenders for the last few years, which has had a dreadful effect on the village businesses and schools. I was really happy when I discovered it had gone to a local family with young children who are now enjoying the same village school I went to. I walked past this morning with the dogs, and they've constructed a fantastic treehouse, just where we had one until it came down in the 1990 storms.

Rockinhippy · 12/12/2013 12:25

Why on earth would I waste my time doing that echt when you made too many presumptions about the OP yourself ??