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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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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:

Floggingmolly · 12/12/2013 12:25

Why didn't you buy it yourself, op?

TheOriginalSteamingNit · 12/12/2013 12:26

Echt, I think you are being unfair. I can totally see why the OP likes to think of a new family in what was her family home - yes, in a broader thread like 'AIBU not to sell my family home to anyone over 60 as I want it to be for young families', you'd have a point, but no need to kick her over this.

OP I know how you feel - my grandparents' house where we spent lots of happy holidays is now all done up and on the market, clearance people been in and everything. It's really sad.

In this case, actually, I'd probably have felt happier to think of another retired couple moving in and growing sweet peas and raspberries on the same canes etc - it's just nice, if unrealistic, to think of some kind of past echo in a special place, isn't it?

StanleyLambchop · 12/12/2013 12:27

YANBU, I still miss my family home, I wish we could have afforded to buy it from my parents. But a young family bought it, they have 4 children, just like my parents did, and one of them has the same name as me! So a continuation of sorts, even if it is a different family. Allow yourself to feel a bit sad, its understandable.

harticus · 12/12/2013 12:31

The comment about 60+ babyboomers has now disappeared from the OP.

TheOriginalSteamingNit · 12/12/2013 12:31

It wasn't in the OP, it is in a comment!

JugglingUnwiselyWithBaubles · 12/12/2013 12:32

I love Prof Google for archiving my poem collection for me!

better than the recesses of my brain I used to have to use

I put in "I lost a continent" and it came back with the poem ....

By Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"
"The art of losing isn't hard to master" (first line)
and later ...
"And look! my last, or next to last,
of three loved houses went"

Hope the OP, and others here, might find it cathartic or interesting x

harticus · 12/12/2013 12:39

SteamingNit - Ah yes! I knew I'd read it somewhere!

My grandfather built their house with his own hands after the war.
That area is now "highly desirable" and bunged up with Russian oligarchs and footballers.
We feel no emotion about it at all other than extreme pain that we didn't hang onto it because it would be worth a bloody fortune.

greenfolder · 12/12/2013 12:47

Yadnbu. My pil lived in their house from 1964 until 2011 when they died. It was so sad clearing the house. It was empty for a year or so. It was a home in a high demand area with a huge garden. We were all so happy that it sold to a family with young children. It was a happy family home that needed a family.

Tailtwister · 12/12/2013 12:51

YANBU. I'm dreading the day my family home is sold. I love that house, it holds a lot of memories for me and I'm very attached to it. If I could afford to buy it I would, but sadly it's way out of our price range.

Original poster

AngryFeet · 12/12/2013 17:49

I would love to have bought it but it is way out of our price range sadly.

I wasn't slagging off the older generation it just annoys me that in an area with great schools that prices inflated so much (the house was worth £55k when my parents bought it in 1981 and sold for £465k) people with young families can't afford to buy and so it was mainly older people viewing. Why should someone who needs 1 bedroom buy one with 5 bedrooms while younger people have to squeeze into smaller houses? I would have no issue with a gay couple with kids or people on benefits moving in. Clearly I have a chip on my shoulder but the housing situation annoys me.

Anyway I don't think it is unreasonable to be pleased a family sized home is going to a family. No need to act like I am some sort of bigot.

Apologies for telling you to fuck off but you got me when I had just dropped something to my old neighbour and the removals lorries pulled up .

Thanks to those who empathised :)

OP posts:

echt · 12/12/2013 19:54

Thanks, angryfeet.

Sallystyle · 12/12/2013 19:58

I was gutted when my mum moved out of ours.

Even more gutted when I drove past and it looks nothing like it did.

PollyIndia · 12/12/2013 19:58

Definitely not being unreasonable. My parents are still in the house they moved to when I was 18 months old and I am now 38. We are all back there for Christmas again this year and I love the way it wraps around me and brings on waves of nostalgia even though me and my sister have our own DC now.

MrsLouisTheroux · 12/12/2013 20:09

Hmm. When our family home was sold I actively dissuaded my DM to sell our lovely family home to a young couple with young DC (like me and DH at the time) . I wanted to buy it but it was waaayyy out of our price range and I jealously couldn't bear the thought of another family having it.
I was very pleased when a 50+ couple with no DC & a shed load of money bought it!
Horrible aren't I?!

Bahhhhhumbug · 12/12/2013 20:27

Sorry l must have been on another planet for years but l have heard the expression 'Baby boomers' many times and even been referred to as such (I'm 55) but what exactly is a 'Baby boomer'. I was referred to as such when l was recently caring for both my very elderly parents , supporting my adult children and looking after my grandchildren at times. I didn't realise it was supposed to be a 'good' situation to be in , rather a piggy in the middle of parents living longer and your kids struggling well into their thirties.

MrsLouisTheroux · 12/12/2013 20:30

Post WW2 child ( now aged late 60s )

Mimishimi · 12/12/2013 21:15

YANBU, my grandfather's house with a lovely large garden that he and my grandmother worked on for over fifty years has been sold along with that of two neighbours as a development site for upmarket flats. I think I would have preferred to have seen it sold to a family than see it demolished. We still occasionally drive past my childhood home ( on the way to somewhere else) in what was once a very rural area and park out the front to take a look. The poor last chap living there was very suspicious when we did that but cheered up when I told him he was taking much better care of it garden-wise than the last lot .

NearTheWindmill · 12/12/2013 21:26

I know exactly how you feel. We have just moved from our family home of 20 years. The one brought our babies home to and which has pencil marks up the kitchen door on their birthdays. It was a happy family home but life moves on and so did we. Not sold yet and I'm sorry to say it will be refurbished for the bankers' market, extended a bit more, and will go to the highest bidder. It will be a sad day when it finally goes and even now I keep going back to look at it and shopping on my old high street. But I know I must move on.

The DC have done quite well; DD hardly phased at all and in fact likes the new home more than the old - more modern, fewer noises, safer, etc. DS though seems a bit more displaced but is ready to leave home anyway - should have in the autumn but decided to have a gap year and I think leaving his home had a bit to do with that; the innate concern of leaving and coming back to a new house without saying a proper goodbye.

I'm sure it will all be OK OP and this is just another chapter.

Alibabaandthe40nappies · 12/12/2013 21:27

YANBU

My parents bought their house in '81, they are still there. They are looking to sell in the next couple of years, and it is going to hit me very hard.
So many happy memories, as a child, and an adult and now as a parent there with my own children.

We are going for Christmas, could be the last one there

Chottie · 12/12/2013 21:43

I felt sad when our family home was sold after my DPs died. My sis and I took a final walk around the empty house and realised that it was just a set of empty rooms and all the memories were locked in our hearts.

woodlandfairycreature · 12/12/2013 21:51

My dad sold our family home when I was 19, I still miss it. I occasionally dream I'm back there and wake up and feel so sad. I loved the house I grew up in.

NearTheWindmill · 12/12/2013 22:11

That's lovely chottie

Original poster

AngryFeet · 12/12/2013 22:19

That is lovely chottie. One thing that struck me when I walked around it one last time was how much smaller itseemed with nothing in it. You would think it would feel bigger but it was like the life had been sucked out of it.

Well it is done now and the new family are in. I have had a good cry. Time to concentrate on making our new house (which is our first owned home) as lovely a place to grow up for our kids as mine was :) Shame that includes lots of building and decorating! .

Thanks everyone :) Has been nice to hear your stories too.

OP posts:

ScarletLady02 · 12/12/2013 22:20

YANBU at all. I lived in the same house for the first 17 years of my life and I still miss it now...it was a ramshackle old cottage and my whole childhood was there...it was a great childhood and I was very lucky to have such wonderful memories of it. It's hard especially now, my Mum is very ill and doesn't really have long left so I've been reminiscing a lot. I still dream about the house a lot even now and I moved out of there 13 years ago.

SueDoku · 12/12/2013 22:20

I moved from my childhood home when I was 14, and I was heartbroken. I can remember all the rooms, the garden and everything about it -- and they said it was a slum and pulled it down, along with the entire area where I grew up...

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