Saying Goodbye

by Terri Mcfadden

It’s safe to say that goodbye can be the hardest of all words to voice. The worst, of course, is when we are forced by death to say it. Almost as hard is when we say farewell to a dream.

Our dream, that of my husband and myself, started in 1990 when we took our four children on a trip to the mountains in western North Carolina. We fell in love with those mountains and there and then decided we wanted to live there some day. Quite unlike our usual deliberation, thinking about pros and cons, what goals and plans we had both for short and long-term, we contacted a real estate agent that very day. The next morning, we set out to look at property, He showed us three parcels. The drive to that third piece took us up a steep and windy gravel road; I thought we’d never get to the top. When we made it to 4400 feet, where the land lay, the views were so spectacular that we could only gasp.

That moment we fell in love with our own little piece of the Great Smokies. Years passed, the children grew up and left home. Now it was our time to plan our new retirement home. To take advantage of the views of the mountains we built a house with floor to ceiling windows – the ceiling soaring to 25 feet. When we moved in, late in 2001, the house wasn’t even completed, the builder deciding he had other projects he’d rather be working on. It became a labor of love for us to finish the house. With some help, we added an Irish pub in the basement, granite facing to the fireplace, built a stone wall and spent many hours landscaping our six acres. We scoured antique stores for the perfect furniture and decorative items. Our niece painted two huge paintings especially for the niche above the fireplace. Bit by bit the house came together. I even enjoyed house cleaning, it was so beautiful.

New friends and old came for parties. We hosted a family reunion for my extended family, enjoyed learning about Germany from exchange students who stayed with us. Sharing the house and our little corner of the mountains was one of the great pleasures of those days. While on our own we enjoyed ourselves, playing games at the table overlooking Mount Pisgah, and nightly pulling out banjo and guitar to take advantage of the Great Room acoustics. Our voices have never sounded so good again!

Times however have a way of changing. The home that we thought we’d live in for the rest of our lives began to seem a burden. Our first granddaughter was born and we were so remote from her little life and that of the rest of our family. We rented a small apartment in Beverly, and for a while the mountain house remained our main residence. But the 1000-mile journey three or four times a year became challenging. We started using the house for vacations only, but discovered it impossible to maintain a house in the country without living there. Finally, we were left with no true options. It was time to say goodbye. We sold the house in 2014. Most the furnishings were sold as well, with just a few items coming back to Beverly with us. I remember standing on the deck outside our bedroom, watching sadly as the movers loaded the elegant cherry table that had seen so many wonderful meals, knowing it was time to say goodbye. It was time to move on.