When the walls keep love out
Making space for a blended family
At the time, five months after my husband’s death, it made sense: I’d use his life insurance money to build a house for me and our young son.
My dad is a retired carpenter and he led the way, designing a simple, cost-effective two-storey home. We called it my “transformer house,” because it could adapt to our little family of two’s changing dynamics over the next few decades: the downstairs guest room had its own washroom for when my kid became a teenager and outgrew the double-sink intimacy of our upstairs living space. The self-contained rental suite could be his if he went to college locally, or I could downsize and rent out the upstairs to vacationing families.
Still in the brain fog stage of grief, every small decision felt monumental: which brand of appliances? Which countertops?
Whenever I felt overwhelmed, I pictured the life we could create in our new house. It would be our oasis-for-two, after all we’d experienced. I’d been inside a widow’s house before, and her hobbies had sprawled throughout: there was freedom in being the only adult to consider.
We painted the walls yellow and, with my dad’s expertise, created our dream house. There was plenty of light, vinyl floors that hid a reasonable amount of dust, and blackout blinds…
