A new life starts once the previous one ends… isn’t that always how it goes.
No matter how much you try, change happens in life and life can never stay simple and constant. However change happens. It can be a change for the better or a change for the worse (sadly that does happen), or simply change! No better or worse then before.
My life, and my family has been going through a painful change for a number of years. The main tectonic shift of change started with the passing away of my Grandmother, my Mother and my Father all within a year of each other. 3 years of relentless heartbreak which was very hard on all of us.
The turmoil continued for another 3 or so years due to disagreements between us brothers and sisters but we are finally reaching an end of that long saga.
Last Monday – 18th December 2017 – was our last official day in Iklin after which the family home is handed over to the new owners.
So it is now onwards and upwards (eventually – as when my new place in Mosta is ready I will be on the first floor). In the interim staying in a lovely little windswept town – Zurrieq (thank you so much sis! you saved me here) until Mosta is done. Yep, that’s a move within a move which can be a bit heavy but it definitely trumps (not the US ‘President’ pls) sleeping in a bus stop.
The departure from Iklin was long in the coming – a tormented process which was arduous, long and tiring. It required quite an amount of logistical coordination and also caused some friction between us all at certain points. it was also a rather dusty affair which left my hands feeling they were covered in sandpaper for at least 5 days. At this point I must thank my cousin and her man (:-) ) who jumped in to help us with storage – Thanks a million you two, fantastic help you have been.
Last Monday evening once I had completed the packing of the last few things I wanted to take out and after helping my sisters in their last minute searched through the piles of timeless flotsam and jetsam of years and years of life I decided to do a bit of a ritual. I needed to do it as, as one of my sisters commented, it was like losing our parent’s a second time over – quite hard to take and very emotional. So, starting with the upstairs apartment, which was our Grandmum’s (Nanna) house, I went and bade fare well to each room, each cranny of the house. I did the same downstairs, our parent’s house and mine for most of my life, pausing for a while in our parent’s bedroom. I then walked the garden and bade farewell to all the trees, all the plants, weeds and herbs and bushes and flowers and parasites, bade farewell to all the animal and various fauna that live there – the numerous cats and dogs that have come and gone – some buried lovingly in the lower field, some creeping in and staying for a while just to move on to pastures new and some dropping in just for a visit – cats, dogs, goats, numerous chickens, rats and mice, bats, snakes even, many different types of birds Including a majestic Eagle Owl and all the ants that felt the urge to help us eat all our food.
That has past now… Iklin stands alone on the top of Iklin Valley, empty and morose and looking very sad.
Good bye Iklin and thank you for the years of wonderful service, despite all your shortcomings, short circuits, monstrous plumbing and crumbling construction we love you and will miss you.
You stood tall and proud on top of that hill despite all the mistreatment you received from nature and human alike, almost majestic were it not for the shabby outward look (which was our fault after all). You were witness to all forms of emotion, happiness, love and success, sadness, pain and grief, anger, frustration and despair and loads of comic relief from our parent’s wonderful attitude to life.
You will be gone soon, pulled down, demolished, returned to dust but you will live long in our hearts.
Good bye Villa Gerald
Fare thee well
Here’s to a new start
A new life
A new home
An end which is also a beginning.
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