This week, I’ve been pondering life and love because my sister and I have decided to sell our house in our hometown of Derry, much to my heartache and despair.
It’s a small house that my sister and I bought around six years ago when we both lived in Dubai. Patricia and her husband found it, fixed it up and furnished it while I was still in Dubai. My other two sisters were in other parts of the world and since our mum had died a few years earlier, we wanted to have a family home where any of us at any time would be able to visit and stay if we needed to. There is nothing sadder than not having a place to call home in the city or town where you were born and raised. Our mother was our figurative rock in Derry and when she died her house was too big to be left empty and it now houses another young family — something our mother would have liked. We have aunts and cousins, who would welcome us into their homes, but they don’t have the space for visitors and it’s just not the same as having our own family home. So we bought our little house and for years I felt safe in the knowledge that I had somewhere to belong to and somewhere to go if I was ever in trouble or needed sanctuary.
The house isn’t perfect. It’s old and damp in some places and stands on a steep incline. There has been much laughter and terror during the winter months as we tried to venture along the outside of the house in treacherous conditions — snow, ice, wind and rain — to our cars and to the local shops seeking succour, solace and a few snacks. I usually parked my car at the top of the street/hill, so to leave the house was to put myself at the mercy of such dramatic meteorological events (it’s Ireland, after all) and the beginning of a dangerous, yet exhilarating descent into possible death as I made my way to the bottom of the hill.
Missing that comfort
It was also a beautiful, comfortably snug, terraced house that took only minutes to walk into the city centre of Derry. It was where I collected some of my best memories of the past few years and was where moved permanently after I left Dubai for good in 2016. There would be days when my sister and I would both be off work (she’s a nurse and works shifts) and we’d lie on the sofas watching TV, while I yelled at advertisements and she chuckled at my silliness and we’d just enjoy each other’s company. I desperately miss that comfort; the only real feeling of home I’d had in years. The house is also where I studied while doing my Master’s; those walls have seen many tears and tantrums by all members of the Curran flock and by some of the little newcomers. My sister and I shared those rooms for almost two years before I decided to move to Yorkshire to seek work and to share love with an Englishman — I was also living in the house when we met. I have a similar feeling when I sit with him and murmur my irritated musings of whatever trite television show is on. And he’ll get used to it, eventually.
But last week we came to the decision to put the house on the market. The idea of losing it came as a blow to me and one I’m still getting used to. My initial thought was panic; panic that I’d have nowhere to stay when I visited Derry. But my sister assured me that wherever she was in Derry there would always be a room for me. That’s a bit of comfort, but it’s just not the same as owning my own home. Alas, the sale has to go ahead, and eventually, hopefully, I’ll be able to buy another house with my beau. Another chapter in my book closing, another beginning, excitement tinged with sadness; but isn’t that the way life was meant to be? After all, what is happiness without the sobering yet sweet sting of sorrow?
Christina Curran is a freelance journalist based in Northern Ireland.
