It’s been hard without my mum this week. I started watching the new season of a series she loved and felt deeply sad that not only would I not receive the usual text from her after she had finished watching it, but she would not even get to enjoy it herself. The content of the first two episodes would have interested her immensely; the first involves a steam train and the second a psychic medium. She would have texted me the moment each one ended, full of excitement (an emotion she didn’t show often) and telling me how good it was and how much I’d like it once I got around to watching it myself. She always watched them on live TV; she was very old school.

And today I learned that her house is now occupied by a young mother and two children. Of course I never expected it to remain empty forever. That would be silly – and a waste. But I was unprepared for how hard it feels to know for sure that it is no longer her house, and I will never go there again.

My mum’s house was my base camp for no less than 27 years. I lived there for a year before I moved away to university, but I always came back there for visits, in the earlier days with my young son, then later with my little dog. I stayed at least two or three times a year, first sleeping downstairs whilst my son had my old bedroom, then later in my old room with my dog curled next to me. I had constant memories of how it used to look with one entire wall covered in bookcases – four of them – and the huge window overlooking the back garden where me and my mum would lay on sun-loungers in the summer months covering almost another wall. It was a lovely room, albeit hot in the summer. It was familiar; always there for me.

Its loss feels almost as painful as my mum herself, perhaps because the house was so much a part of her. She rarely went out so I only ever saw her at home, at least until she went to hospital last year in the lead up to the end. She was as much part of the walls and furniture as they were part of her; she was a hoarder who held onto everything that mattered to her. Photos hung on every wall, and she had ornaments and pots and pictures from countries she has been. She kept everything from my childhood that she hadn’t already given to me – old school books, my violin that I gave up at age 8, birthday cards I’d written to her when I was five years old and younger, and of course photo albums. I had already spent time this week examining some photos of ancestors from the early 1900s and earlier, wondering who some of them are, and wishing I could ask her. Often these things only come to light after a person has gone and then it’s too late to ask.

So the house has gone and with it the contents. Most of my mum’s more personal stuff is now with my sister or myself, some had to sadly to go charity as there was so much. I chose to give some away, knowing it will do good in another family. And now, likewise, my mum’s house has been given away, only it was never really her house at all, it just felt that way for a time. With every loss there is a letting go and an understanding that nothing ultimately belongs to us, it is only borrowed. Who my mum was (and hopefully still is) remains, even if we see the forms that she inhabited being stripped away, like winter, to make room for the new to grow.

I hope the little family of three will be happy in their new home. It is truly a home to cherish for its location, its condition, and its neighbours. As sad as I am to know that my mum’s connection to it is no more, I wish the new occupants all the love that a home can bring.