Special Gift

I decided to paint a special picture for my husband for Father's Day.  He has been wrestling with the fact that the house he grew up is a total state of disrepair and it seems the only option is to either tear it down or burn it.  It is really hard to lose a place that is close to your heart.  I know this because the house I grew up in and the farm where it was located was taken to build a dam.  My parents rented the farm back until they were finally forced to leave. A few years before that the house burned.  I remember standing there and watching my childhood turn to ashes so I know how hard that can be.  No one has lived in my husband's old house for years.  This is how it looked in 1989 when we decided to try and save it.

Since then we have spent a lot of our time, money and energy trying to keep it from falling down. The last two years have been a struggle and we have lost the battle.  We kept the yard and surrounding area mowed but the house became more than we could keep up.  When you don't live in a house and only go down in the summer time it is almost impossible unless you want to spend a lot of money.  Something decided to tear a big hole in the roof and move in.  They chewed holes in the walls and fell through the ceiling.  The rain has poured in and everything smells of mold.  There comes a time when you have to give up and let it go.

So I decided to paint a picture of how things looked in my mind.  We have no other pictures so I just painted from memory.   It is so hard to let go so I hope this will help him have something to hold on to.

I read this somewhere and I failed to jot down who said it:

"One of the hardest lessons in life is letting

go whether it's guilt, anger, love,

loss or betrayal.

Change is never easy.

We fight to hold on and

we fight to let go."