My parents bought that house, constructed in 1930, in the fall of 1982. My father was dying of lung cancer and he knew for sure that his days were indeed very numbered. They had been living on our farm up in the Sandhills of Harvey County and their home was at least five miles from the south central Kansas town of Burrton. Mom didn't know how to drive and Dad was worried that she would be alone there with no one to help her. It was his dying wish, really it was, that he find a place for my Mom to live in Hutchinson where she would be close to the 4 of us kids that lived in Reno County. If she needed something, we could be there in just a moment's time. On my son Ricky's 2nd birthday, October 2, 1982 they moved into their new house on East 14th Street just in the "nick of time". My father lived for 8 weeks longer before succumbing to the dreaded disease that takes so many lives still each year. When he passed away two weeks before Christmas Day, my mother was left a widow and she began her life alone. It was the beginning of a 25-year stay there in a place, even long after she had left, that has always been known as "Mom's house".
I admired my mother greatly for the way that, even then as a single 62-year old woman, she soldiered on after Dad's death. They had chosen a great location to purchase a home in, the center of town and very close to downtown shopping. Just a few blocks to the west was the neighborhood Dillon's store and often, especially in her early days, she would walk down there and buy the few groceries she would need. Often times when the little grandkids were with her, she would take them along as well. In my mind I can still see them, walking along hand-in-hand with her. Sometimes when they were "good" (which evidently was alot), they would stop off at the Baskin Robbins ice cream store just across Main Street where they would enjoy a cone on a hot summer's Kansas day. Times were tight for her, nearly always, and I really don't know how she came up with the extra money to routinely treat the kids there. Undoubtedly she gave up something for herself in order to please them. That's just the way she was and in my way of thinking, it is the way she always will be.
Mom entered long-term nursing home care in 2003 and it was the beginning of a sad 4 years of life upcoming. She hated to leave her home, rued the day that she no longer could care for herself without the help of others, and settled in most unhappily to life at Good Samaritan Village up on 30th Street in Hutch. By 2004, her available funds were quickly being depleted and it became necessary to sell her house in order to pay for her care. We hated to do it, yet had no choice. Any one who has ever been faced with a similar situation will understand completely. It doesn't take a long time to go through alot of money. You do what you have to do in order to survive in this life of ours. We sold her home in 2004 to a family friend who bought it with the intention of remodeling it and then reselling it. I bought it back the next year and it has been mine since then.
In all of the years that Mom lived there, happily and content to do so, I never had a desire to live there or to own it myself. It never even entered my wildest of dreams, not once. By 2004, I was divorced and I needed a place to call my home. Strangely, oddly, ironically Mom's old house was ready to be sold and I was the one who bought it. I moved in on the first day of April in 2005 and what I once thought was a place I never would have wanted, now became a place of peace and tranquility for me. Times weren't easy at first and I struggled to make ends meet. I had never been alone like that, in charge of only myself and no one else. I understood my mom's "lean times" because I endured them myself. You know, I felt her spirit there and at my worst moments, it was like she was actually with me to hold me up and lift my spirits once again. Sometimes late at night, shoot sometimes the first thing in the morning, I would talk to her and imagine that she was right there with me. With tears in my eyes, I would cry out to her, sounding not like the early 50-something woman that I was, but rather like the little girl I used to be. I needed her. I needed a mom to talk to and strange as it sounds now, that's just what I did. Perhaps equally strange to some, I believe she heard me. It was in that house that I learned to do things for myself and to realize for the first time in life that I was really a very capable woman.
"Mom, how did you do it? I mean look at me. I am struggling and alone now. What will I do if something breaks here? I can't fix anything on my own. Who will I call to help me? I wish you were here, really here with me. You'd be able to tell me the direction to go. I know...I know... You made it through worse times than I am having now. Do you believe that I can do the same? Probably I really didn't have to ask that, did I? You always have believed in me. I promise to be just like you. You didn't give up and neither shall I."Come late next week, after the last of the Colorado state assessments have been given here, I will make the journey home to Kansas. It's time for me to go back and ready my house there, HER house there on 14th Street in Hutchinson for someone else to live in and enjoy. I plan to lease it for a year while I wait to decide whether or not to sell it in the future. The journey back home is a long one, over 600 miles in all. In good weather, decent traffic and road conditions the trip takes right at 11 hours. I'll be leaving after school on that next Wednesday to get as far as I can the first night. There is so much to be done to get things ready and my time will go so very quickly. It's now the hour for me to draw to a close the part of life that remains for me back in Reno County. I know I won't finish everything in this trip but by June 1st, I will hope to have it listed and ready to go. I have my work cut out for me.
It won't be easy to give up that home, one that has always been a place of security for me but it is much too difficult to keep up two homes that are so many miles apart. I'm beginning to make my peace with that and rather than it set empty, it only makes sense that someone else take care of it in my place. I believe that my parents would be proud of me for what I did to buy back their home and I always tried to keep it up in the way that they would have wished.
In the popular children's book by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie, the opening chapter tells of the time that Laura and her family left their log cabin in the Big Woods of Wisconsin to make their journey west to a new life in Kansas. I loved the way that Laura described what it was like to leave their home of forever that day. She wrote that they closed the shutters on the windows of the cabin in order that it wouldn't have to be sad to see them drive away. I felt the same way when I left my home in Hutchinson on the 24th day of May, 2013. Right before I left, I said my "good byes" to it, drew in the curtains and cried as we drove away. For all of the memories made there, for over 30 years now, I so give thanks. May whoever occupies that little home next be as blessed as I have been there.
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