jeff2006 said:
Astro -- it sounds like a hard transition to sell the house of 50 years and move hundreds of miles away? How did it go?
Very smoothly--other than the Great Moving Van Disaster, which I'll get to in a moment.
My parents were 12 years apart in age, and most of their friends were older, more like Daddy's age. They must've lost at least one a year for the last 10 years they lived in NY, so half their friends were dead & gone and a couple of others were just plain gone, having moved a great distance to be near children or siblings. After my mother's parents died, plus the expense thing and feeling disheartened by all that death, they felt they needed a new beginning.
meanwhile, following a vacation to Seabrook Island, one of my brother's relocated his small business to South Carolina. In addition, my father's favorite cousin and some of his extended family lived here in SC. Another close relative by marriage (who lost his job at age 49 and hadn;t found another for 5 years) moved to Charleston around the same time. Kind of a confluence ging on! My parents had visited my father's cousin during Spoleto Festival several times, so knew they wouldn't have to give up classical music concerts. And my mother threw herself into several club memberships (bridge club, garden club...) and volunteering at Meals on Wheels--activities she hadn't been able to persue easily when she worked full time. All of their new friends were younger, which seemed to rejuvenate my parents and remove the "stench of death" they felt had been hanging over them. The really enjoyed the city of Charleston as well as the beach, their new house, and even their new 'burb. My father won the Golden Pen award of the local newspaper several times and became involved in a couple of internet chat groups (chiefly the AOL atheist group). He told me more than once that this was the happiest time of his life.
As for that moving van... it was a dark and stormy night, the driver lost control or fell asleep or something, and overturned the truck. He was in critical condition for a while, and my parents lost most of their belongings through breakage, rain damage, or theft. While they missed some favorite things like photos, my mother was delighted to work with a decorator for the first time and furnish a new house almost from scratch. Plus they had also given my brothers and me some things before they moved, which mitigated the disaster.
