Another Piece of My Childhood is Gone

I’m in Chicago this week. Part of the trip has been to look at a condo we might want to move to (our move to Portugal has been put on hold due to my mother’s passing in April). The other part of the trip was to help my father sell their condo in Florida.

The bought the condo when I was 15 or 16 though we had been going to Panama City for years before that for family vacations and to visit family. After they moved out of the Chicago house I grew up in back in 2016 the condo really felt like the last physical piece of my childhood and watching him sell it has been bittersweet.

Let me be clear. I understand why my father sold it and supported him wholeheartedly in doing so. After mom passed it was time and, indeed, I helped him list it right after she passed. There was no way he was going to go back there without her.

For years they planned to retire to that condo, right on the beach in Panama City Beach. When Joy and I moved to Florida they were spending about 6 months a year there and Joy’s parents were spending about 6 months of the year in West Palm Beach. Moving closer to family, even then, was a very big part of why we moved to Florida in the first place and, with my parents gone and Joy’s parents spending weeks instead of months of the year, now in Daytona, family is a bit part of why we’re leaving as well.

Still, while it might be time it is still a bit sad to see. For a lot of reasons our family vacations there were the time of year where we always felt most like a family. It was a break for us all in an area so very different from our Chicago normal and I looked forward to it every year. When they sold their Chicago house (also something that was done at a very good time for it) the condo, for me, was still my connection back to those times and we would still go at least once a year, even as recently as this past November.

I guess you could say that the condo’s sale is, very much, the end of the road for Florida for me.

Now to just keep moving forward.