Winterberry will always be home for my wife and her siblings. She was born into this home, raised in this home and learned to love and grow in this home. Winterberry is where she left each day to go to school; made lifelong friends; where she grabbed her bike and rode through the neighborhood; played sports in the court in front of her house; walked to the corner store to buy a hot pretzel; went to church from Winterberry each week. Most importantly, Winterberry is the home where she left and returned to her Mom and Dad after each day’s activity. Winterberry is home and although she has not lived in the Winterberry house for nearly 30 years, Winterberry will always be her childhood home where lifelong memories forever live on, in her heart and in her mind.
After over 51 years of being the home to the V&E family, Winterberry will become the home to a new family in the coming months. Winterberry has been well cared for by her owners. Like their children, my wife’s parents have loved their home creating a loving, positive environment to raise their family. From the outside, it is just another house. From the inside, there are countless stories and acts of love that developed and nurtured beautiful people that make up the fabric of our country, whom have gone on to establish their own families and the Dreams of Winterberry live on through them. The holidays — Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Halloween, even snow days, and the list goes on. Joy, happiness and love.
Joy, happiness and love does not happen without the Mom & Dad that created Winterberry. The house is a house, but the home V & E created, and the success of their children all being faithful servants of the Lord is their greatest achievement. They loved, they gave and they gave some more. Their time at Winterberry is coming to an end. Blessed with longevity in life, V&E are in a position to pass this beautiful home to the next family, memories and all. Truly, it is too bad the walls cannot talk. There are thousands of stories to tell, all good stories too. The walls are forever smiling.
There is sadness that comes with this move out of Winterberry. For Mom & Dad, I can only imagine. Much of their life long memories are here. One house, 51 years of living, celebrating, and working. The friendships and memories are too abundant to even begin to list, if one even knew them all. Preparing to move from their home must be sad, very sad but it falls into the category of the necessary, a price to pay for living a wonderfully long life. For my beautiful wife, five days of being back home at Winterberry helping them prepare for the next stage of life and leaving Winterberry behind brings this to the forefront. Hard for the children, hard for my wife, and doubly hard for Mom & Dad (although they won’t say so).
If a house has karma, this house is worth another $500K in value. The new owners will inherit a home with excellent karma. Perhaps the realtor should list great karma? Why not, some people are fearful of buying a haunted house, why not list outstanding karma as an attribute along with no ghosts? The walls will forever be smiling.
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Guardian 6 has become a sentimental in his older years! Good to see! Well said…..kinda brought a tear to my eye until I realized that the Colonel’s old friends (the MOVERS) will soon be there! Then I laughed out loud !!!
I can see Winterberry in my mind’s eye: it represents so many idylic settings, where children run in and out the front door and then out one last time before leaving on their own quests. Thank you for a wonderful story.
Very sweet article , I have been lucky enough to have been invited into the magical Winterberry home many Decembers – will miss seeing the V&E Clan and all of their warmth extended to our family – May God bless V&E on their next chapter to be written in STL ?