Gone

I was fooling around on Zillow.com today - it's a strange, surreal site where you type in an address and you can see the current market value of any property, including satellite photos that are eerily close up. After checking out our present house and feeling relieved that its value hasn't totally tanked since we bought it, I decided to type in the address of the house I grew up in in New Jersey, the sale of which nearly shattered me two years ago. I longed to see it again, even a fuzzy birds-eye satellite shot.

Zillow responded: There is no house at this address.

I blinked, thinking, there must be some mistake. I typed in the address of our old across-the-street neighbors, just one digit away from our address. It showed up right away. I zoomed in on their house. Their driveway was directly across from ours. I zoomed in and zoomed in. I saw trees with skinny, bare branches. I saw the house that used to be next to ours. I spotted all the neighbors' houses: the Kiesselbach's, the Wubbes', the Schleichers'. But it was true. Where my house used to stand was an empty lot. It was a gray-green scrabble of nothingness.

My house is gone. I'm typing through tears.

I mourn the loss of that house almost as deeply as I mourn the loss of my father, who died six years ago. Both of them meant home to me, in the most elemental way.

I can't think about it right now. I can't think about telling my mother. We'll both have nightmares for months. Years.