The cottage - redux

You come prepared for these moments.  The Weaver clan, does, anyway.

If there are tears to be shed, it's done before.  At home, among your immediate family.  To exhaust the emotions.

Because when it's time to gather, to make hard and necessary decisions, it becomes business. Your mind needs to be clear; the course you chart needs to be reasoned and rationale. 

I remember when Dad and Mom finally decided, after some persuasion from us kids, that they should let us help oversee their finances.

It was tough, especially for Dad.  

Dad always was that way.  The responsible one.  My sister recounted a moment when he, very late in years, was being whisked away by an ambulance crew, unsure whether this was the "big" moment at which his time would run out.

He made it clear as he went out the door that he wasn't ready for the big leap ... but also, just in case, he wanted us to know that all of his and Mom's tax files for the current year were in a nearby room, ready to turn in to H&R Block. 

Here was Dad, raised a Baptist, facing the prospect of the ethereal, and yet he seemed to worry most not about his place in Heaven but whether Uncle Sam got his due. 

The reason, of course, was that Dad was a practical man.  He knew that taxes must be paid, and if he didn't pay them, his progeny could be affected.  On the other hand, I suspect he didn't know for sure -- for sure -- that Heaven existed.

It was an understandable choice. 

So we come to the cottage discussion.  There's not much to say, really.  We decided, on Saturday morning, and in a very business-like way, to sell the cottage but with an understanding that we would like to lease it back for at least one year.

We all realized it was a compromise.  We could sell it outright, right away, assuming the buyer could get its finances in order.  But we wanted not just this summer, but next summer too.  To say our goodbyes. 

And that was alright with all of us.  We'd all accepted that Mom and Dad's "Windsong" was a very long, wonderful moment in time, a wonderful gift, but not permanent.  Most of us had moved on, to other vacation rituals and destinations.  We had memories, sure.  But memories shouldn't be an anchor that prevents us from searching for new. 

We later that day had a great time in Nashville. 

After all, we're Weavers.  We're practical folk.  It's business.  Dad, I think, would have been proud.   Or at least understanding.  

He'd been there.  Done that.