Ducks In A Row
Posted By Judith on 19th November 2019
How many times have you heard someone say that the 3 most stressful things in life are, death, divorce and moving house?
Well as I seem to be doing 2 of the 3 in a twelve month period I can assure you I’ve heard it quite a lot. So is it true?
I can’t comment on divorce but I’m pretty well placed to comment on the other two and I can categorically say they are both terribly stressful, but in completely different ways.
Death, particularly when it’s sudden is a huge, devastating shock. Nothing can prepare you for it, but once it’s done it’s done. You can’t go back, you can’t change it, there are no grey areas, no variables, no ambiguity, no options, no second chances, it’s pretty much a done deal, so there is little choice but to get on and face up to it.
Moving house on the other hand is full of all kinds of variables, ambiguities, problems and pitfalls, even when you think you have prepared for it with all your ducks in a row,
(that’s the clean version!) the process somehow conspires against you.
Britain is a country obsessed by home ownership, we’ve been buying and selling properties for decades, how then can it be such a painful experience?
In an age when communication has never been quicker, cheaper, more varied or more readily accessible to ordinary people, why is the process of house sale/purchase still so stressful?
I can answer all of that in two words, lack of COMMUNICATION and loss of CONTROL.
Some of the professionals, who are being paid handsomely to provide the service, seem incapable of talking to each other without prompting and the idea they should actually keep you, the interested parties, in the loop, well heaven forfend!!
One particularly party in the proceedings must have had a file marked ‘black hole’, lots of things were sent in to it, but none came back out.
I’m no-ones idea of a control freak, but the complete loss of control in this situation is destructive beyond words, it saps the very life out of you and plays tricks with your mind.
Hours, days, weeks go by. What’s happening? Is anything happening? Your mind fills in the blank spaces. It consumes your every waking moment. Nothing else matters and ‘time’ seems to have 2 speeds, running parallel with each other.
But as we know nothing is over until the fat lady sings and so it was that at the 11th hour, or more accurately the 15th week, my sale fell through and I also lost ‘no.14’. Devastated doesn’t even come close.
What will I do now?
No idea, certainly nothing before the New Year.
The whole experience has floored me. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I’m only posting this now because I’d written most of it before it all went wrong. It was supposed to have a happy ending.
I will come back from this eventually, but I might go quiet for a while.
So do I have any words of wisdom on the subject of death and moving house?
Well yes I do.
