Making memories - the last day in Hyde Park

I was going to "plead the Fifth" of why I left Hyde Park, but now that I'm here in West Roxbury, I feel that I should tell you why I (and my mother) left.

After thirty-six years, Hyde Park just wasn't the same anymore.  When people who lived here long ago remark that it looks like a ghost town, with hardly any vibrancy and reason to linger, it's time to go.  If residents (and the police) think you're more an interloper than a resident, you know the neighborhood you grew up in isn't yours anymore.  Hyde Park is still a bedroom community, but over the years there's a stark, unspoken line divided by the overcrowded, only-line-in-town Route 32 buses and the infrequent, expensive, yet designed-for-the-suburban-resident Commuter Rail.

After two days of moving back and forth between the old and new houses (I was tired, nay, exhausted, from hauling in boxes after boxes after boxes of stuff - and in significant pain), yesterday was the final day I would be at the old house, just to clean up the last things there.  My brother came to see the house for the last time before he went back to his apartment in Roslindale. 

While my mother cleaned out the house on Summer Street, I volunteered to walk to Central Hardware in Cleary Square to get new keys for the new house.  Mainly, the walk was a way to clear my head, escape from all the stress of the move and the leave, and have a moment to myself other than constantly load and unload things out of boxes.

During my youth, I had walked to Cleary Square to get food, pizza, sundries, etc.  All the old stores had gone, replaced by tacky stores and many empty storefronts.  Even the bus stop, which for many years had conveniently been placed in front of what had been Mama Mia's and Van's, had been moved to in front of Most Precious Blood, which is now a charter school.

I got my keys, and walked back to Tedeschi's for a New York Post and some lottery tickets.  I walked down Summer Street for the final time, like I had done many times late at night coming home from the Stoughton train.  I came up the stairs for the last time as my mother finally cleaned everything up so the new tenant could move in.

After I turned in my keys and we locked the door for the last time, we visited my grandfather, and by then I knew the end was coming.  When we had our last family Thanksgiving at Summer Street, I felt no emotion other than elation.  This time, I beginning to choke up.  Not cry like a banshee, but have that hefty, lump-in-the-throat feeling with stinging in the eyes.  I quickly walked back to the car once we were done.

We got in the car, drove through the potholes of Parrott St for the last time, and then we were gone.  Only the ghosts of memories past - good and bad - remained behind.