Letting Go

The house sold. After weeks of uncertainty, I get a text from my realtor “are you available to sign this afternoon?”

Hours later, at the title companies’ office, I sign in. My name lands in the spot directly underneath the signatures of the buyers who had signed 3 hours prior, at noon. Their real-life signatures looked feeble and broken—they didn’t contain the bold confident flair of the electronic signatures I’d grown accustomed to.

After signing in, I’m ushered into a windowless room with a big table in the center and 3 office chairs on each side all encased like mummies in blue saran wrap so they can be sanitized. I take a seat, and pump some foamy hand sanitizer from a bottle in the center of the table into my hand, right as a woman clutching a thick daunting stack of paperwork enters the room.

Hi, I’m Cecelia,” she says.

I’d pumped too much sanitizer, and was awkwardly rubbing the excess on my arm. “If you’re ready, take one of those pens. They’re all clean.”

I pluck one from the bunch, and we’re off.

She settles in across from me, and shuffles her stack. Then, with the deft precision of a casino employee at the blackjack table, she deals my first page.

“This one states that…. Just sign at the bottom. Now this one means… just initial here and sign and date here…” on and on until, “This one says that you relinquish the title of the house.”

“Wow,” I pause, “This makes it official.”

“Yes, are you sure it’s what you want?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t hesitate too long. I didn’t dwell on all the emotion, experiences, bad times and incredibly rich moments, the loneliness and insecurity and moving through that and finding clarity. All of the life I’d experienced there. All the ways I loved my home, love living in the forest.

I sign. A collaboration of head hand heart and pen. It’s so easy. The actual physical step of making it happen requires such little effort. Just a quick flash of my messy squiggle with its long dramatic tail at the end.

And that’s that. A chapter closed; the house no longer mine. Chad and I are one step closer to our adventure!

Hours after signing, Chad finds out he tested positive for covid. And a few days after that, while in quarantine with him, I get covid too. I’d been hanging out upstairs avoiding him. Feeling like the person in a zombie movie who’d been bitten and was waiting to ‘turn.’

“Babe? Try not to touch too many things,” I said from what I hoped was the safety of the living room couch as he thumped around in the kitchen.

“I’m going to touch everything,” he exclaimed, and then launched into song. “Touching meeee, touching youuuuu…”

But it didn’t matter, I was doomed. I’d been exposed the night before he got his positive diagnosis. I tried not to get too stressed; we had two weeks to get out of the house, most of which I was to be quarantined.

This wouldn’t be too bad, would it?