My Parents Sold My “Magical” Childhood Home — And I Learned a Lesson About Closure I Didn’t Expect

I was standing at the deli counter of my small hometown’s grocery store when my 84-year-old mother told me the news: “Your father and I talked about it, and we really need to be closer to better medical help, so we’re moving off the island.” I froze mid-order. The sandwich artist waited for me to choose a meat while my entire childhood shifted under my feet.

Their reasons for moving and selling made sense, but, still, I felt betrayed by this seemingly sudden choice. It’s hard for anyone to lose their childhood home, I imagine, but in my case this wasn’t just any house — it was the first truly safe place I’d lived after my birth mother couldn’t care for me and my siblings. My grandparents adopted us and brought us up here on Whidbey Island, a beautiful seahorse-shaped isle in the Puget sound that’s not too far from Seattle, Washington. 

My childhood was picturesque. Whidbey boasts windswept beaches, scenic mountain views, and adorable small-town storefronts that look like they were pulled from a movie. In fact, Practical Magic really was filmed there when I was a child. The community is small and tight-knit. When I was growing up there, it felt like all 70,000 residents somehow knew each other — a fact that was sometimes not ideal when I was a teenager who (understandably) wanted to hide things from my parents.

I didn’t appreciate Whidbey enough when I was a kid. I fantasized about getting out to a big city. It was only after moving away to New York that I grew to love and miss it as a quiet respite as an adult. I would come back and visit as often as possible — especially in the summer when the weather was perfect, the ocean breeze was plentiful, and the colorful sunsets were always photograph-worthy.

Maybe I was so upset because I’d always pictured inheriting my parents’ house one day, maybe moving back with my husband when city life lost its shine. The home was gorgeous, a 1970s Northwest contemporary house with mid-century modern bones. It felt like the perfect place to retire, but the fantasy had its cracks. It was massive (3,400 square feet) and it had multiple floors, which is not ideal for aging in place and would’ve been a burden to maintain. Whidbey is only accessible by ferry and one bridge. Even if I did get the house, I’d eventually be in the same boat as my parents: moving closer to the “mainland” for better healthcare. 

I mourned my childhood home, yes, but also a future I had pictured for years. Returning to Whidbey is challenging — Airbnbs just across the street from my childhood home charge $300 a night. The average home sells for over $650,000. I would not be able to afford a home here ever again. I had to say goodbye. 

I didn’t have a lot of time to come to terms with saying farewell to my home. Less than two weeks after that visit, my parents found a new house in a Seattle suburb and put in an offer. It was incredibly unexpected. I ended up planning out my summer around helping them move and downsize.

During my next two visits, I boxed up 34 years of my family’s life. I sorted through high school essays, terrible attempts at Manga art, pathetic diary entries, so much embarrassing teen memorabilia that made me cringe. I saved a few items, digitized others, and recycled the rest.

I spent my mornings at the local cafe picking up sustenance for the family as we worked, then headed to my favorite thrift stores in the afternoon to stock up on secondhand finds, and spent an evening at the Island Shakespeare Festival, of which I was an original founding member in 2010.

Only two whirlwind months after the initial shock, it was officially time to say goodbye to Whidbey Island. The night before, I walked through every room of the house. I cried as everything hit me and as moments of my life played back in my head like a grainy VHS tape: I remembered recording a terrible podcast with my siblings in the computer room, turning the side yard into a makeshift water park with a tarp and a garden hose every summer, and curling up on the ugly, cozy brown sofa in the living room every Christmas Eve to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol.

After settling my parents into their new house, I thought I’d have one final goodbye that would bring me some closure — my sister and I had planned a sleepover in the empty house — but real life, as it often does, had other plans.

My dad had a sudden and unexpected health issue. I spent the day shuttling him and my mom to and from urgent care. That day snapped everything into perspective. The point of leaving this house was so they could be closer to good medical care, and that was more important than me getting in my farewell moment.

I didn’t make it back after the moving day, and I’m not sure I will ever be able to have a final goodbye before my childhood home is sold. And weirdly, I’m fine with that. I’d dreaded the move, clinging to the house as the anchor to my past. But I realized that my attachment wasn’t really to the structure; it was to the people in it. 

The home I grew up in wasn’t special because of its walls or even its location (although Whidbey Island is objectively stunning). It was special because my parents built a life there for us — one rooted in safety and love, where I grew, became an artist and performer, and had the opportunities to move somewhere else.

My parents are now in a place where they can get the care they need, surrounded by people who can help them. And that’s worth more than any mountain view or patch of land. I still don’t know if or where I’ll retire. That uncertainty feels like the curse of being a millennial. But no matter where I end up, I’ll always carry Whidbey Island’s magic with me, and the truth that home isn’t a house with a view — it’s the people who made me safe enough to dream.

Perfect goodbyes don’t exist. Plans shift. Health scares happen. Family drama can rear its head. I’d wanted a moment of perfect, poetic closure, but what I got was a rushed, imperfect exit that still managed to bring clarity. People talk a lot about “letting go” as if it’s a deliberate, ceremonial act. But sometimes letting go happens because you simply run out of time — or because reality interrupts your plans. And that’s okay.