Sometimes, losing one’s identity is harder than losing a person.

The house I am looking at is my own.

Or, at least, it was. My blood and the work of my hands composed its formation. But I cannot go inside. I can only stand here and wonder what could have been.

It was 1998 and I was in second grade. A major change was about to occur. My family home had always been on Elm Tree Drive, an under-developed part of my small town. Our real home, however, was at my grandmother's.

The Kleeberger homestead had always circulated around my grandmother’s property on the other side of town. In our small town’s infancy, this area used to be rural. In fact, my grandparents lived on something more akin to a farm than in a neighborhood. Fortunately, it encompassed a larger chunk of property than was normal for the area. We spent most days here. If there was a meal to be had, it was at grandma’s house. So, when the property next door went up for sale, my parents bought it immediately.

Technically, our new house was only a mile or two away. However, as the town grew, this area became its own district. What had become a historic road also became the gateway to the rich neighborhood. We called it “The Colony.” Being the gateway to such a district meant our property was not extravagant by any means; these were the older homes surrounded by development. But we were right next door to grandma, the lifeblood of our family. We also didn’t settle for what started as a meager two-bedroom home.

Immediately after moving, the vision began — we were going to add onto and completely renovate the scant residence. Quite literally, we were going to do the work. School and employment by day, a family of builders by night (and weekends, of course). It took a couple of years, but eventually, we created a magnificent abode. We pieced together rocks for the exterior, we dug a pool practically by hand, and every drop of paint and every brick on the walkways was done by us. Our home was a dream and grandma was right next door.

I have such vivid memories of that place. We threw the best parties, we had amazing holiday seasons, and I will forever hold with fondness being able to walk out my side door to sit at my grandmother's. Because we had unprecedented access to land, our yard was the yard to play in. I can still smell the fresh-cut grass from when I would sit by our beautiful pool and reflect on all the hard work that went into making a dream come true.

Yet, those are now just memories; an artifact of existence that can only exist in my mind. Like a picture of a deceased loved-one, I can reflect on previous moments but, in the end, I can only visualize the past, mourn what is now inaccessible, and let go of any future continuation that is forever out of reach.

The house, however, does not carry the most pain. Sure, those memories are beautiful and I wish I could go back and sit in my grandma’s rocking chair one more time. I sometimes contemplate what it would have been like to take my children swimming at their grandparent’s house or play catch with them in the yard just like when I was little.

But that’s all gone now.

My grandma was truly what held our family together. I didn’t know it then, but my parents struggled. In fact, our move and housing renovation seem to have been one last attempt to make something worth staying together for. My dad worked more and more, my mom was a closet alcoholic, and when my grandmother died, so did my family.

Our housing situation provided some convenience, if only for a moment. What was grandma’s house soon became mom’s house. It made it easy to see them both whenever I returned from college. The once warm, inviting homes so ingrained in my childhood both felt empty and cold; it was like visiting a museum of a former life that was slowly becoming a morgue. Every visit only signaled the impending end; a constant reminder of what was now finished.

My parents would get officially divorced shortly thereafter. The home we built, the life created, and the esoteric hope of the future became a symbol of the pain. I wanted nothing to do with it. I would sit in my childhood room and, instead of playful thoughts and fond memories, I felt hatred. How could something so perfect be thrown away like this? I did everything I could to keep my parents together. I looked for every glimmer of hope that this could all be restored. But, just like the presence of my grandmother, it was over. I knew it; no matter how much I pretended to ignore reality. The house now represented everything that had fallen apart in my life.

Yet, I still held out hope. Maybe I could start my own family and we could still make this a meaningful space for the future. Maybe another project awaited that could maintain the memory and history of this place. Maybe we could still come back for a meal and let laughter fill these rooms one more time. Maybe we could take it all back and start again.

Before any of that, however, I had to escape the pain.

My family had died and, with it, my hope.

I got married that next summer and immediately moved to California. On our way out west, we stopped for one last night in my childhood home. I slept in my room, now a grown man, but one who desperately wished to be that child again. The next morning, like so many other mornings, I woke up, walked outside, and left.

I did not know it then, but that was the last time I would ever step foot in that house.

What I would give to have one more day there; to show my children the places that formed me; to tell them about their great-grandmother and the parties and what it was like to put rocks on the wall and mix concrete until midnight and then go to school the next day.

Shortly after I moved, my parent's divorce forced them to declare bankruptcy, and the house was foreclosed upon. I got a phone call from my dad telling me he was sorry and that our home was gone. Finally, the home that represented our dead family, our departed history, and our lost story was also no more.

The death of my home in the form of a house came through the death of my home in the form of my family.

It’s late December and Christmas is done.

My family takes Christmas pretty seriously — a last-ditch effort to uphold those wonderful Christmases as a child, I suppose — and there’s plenty of cleaning to be done. We live in an old farmhouse and, for efficiency’s sake, a tiny closet sits in the corner of the kitchen under the stairs. Not sure what to do with such a strange space, this is where we store our cleaning supplies.

The closet needs some attention and so I tuck myself through the tiny door of this room that is no taller than four feet. I feel like Harry Potter. The mess is disorienting. I don’t think we have touched this closet since we moved in three years ago and the accumulated mess testifies to our neglect. As I move items out of the way, I finally clear enough room to sit in the corner amidst items that have certainly been there since our inhabitance. There’s a broken broom, a few empty boxes, and the random toy making an admirable effort to avoid the trash can. It’s a lingering mess that has been avoided and here I am confronting it.

The metaphor became reality, however, when I saw tucked away in the corner a long-lost item that was intentionally left hidden since the day we moved in.

A tequila bottle. With no liquor in it. Just dirt.

There’s no cool worm story here. The existence of this token goes back to one of those unceremonious visits to my childhood home turned museum-morgue when I had just turned 21. In the awkwardness of feeling like a ghost returning to the present with no resemblance to the past I knew, I was ready to end the visit, go back to school, and get out of that symbolic hell.

The night before I left, I decided to use my time to pack up my things so I could get on the road as soon as possible. My dad, who often worries about the state of motor vehicles, wanted to make sure that my vehicle was fully functional for the return trip. The tension of the house was heavy and the future clear. Irrespective of my obvious disdain, my dad asked me to go out to my grandma’s garage to find an air pressure gauge so we could check my tires before I left.

There’s a feeling of dread over the property that once held my family; now split among the various houses. The steps were familiar. Out the side door and to the left. The garage door opener that we always kept in our house was still there. I hadn’t been in this garage since my grandmother died. It is a massive structure, once home to my grandfather who used it as a mechanic’s shop. The smell of motor oil and construction materials had an air of familiarity. As we approached the garage, the rattling noise of the garage door careening its way up felt like a nursery rhyme. I wanted to yell at my parents, “We can still have this. Don’t throw it away.” But I stay silent. I want to get this over with.

I walk straight in and begin rummaging through various tools. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. My dad’s tools are probably still from the 20th century. What did air pressure gauges even look like back then? After a couple of minutes fumbling around, I turn to tell my dad that I can’t find it and ask if we can just go back inside. As I turn, however, I’m caught off guard by the fact that he isn’t looking at all. In fact, I see him with an unfamiliar bottle and two really small glasses, pouring an amber-gold liquid into each. It was then that my dad said words he had probably been waiting to say since I was born:

“Come here, son. Let’s take a shot together.”

Now, call me a prude, but I had never consumed alcohol. Not that I was against it, I just didn’t really care to. Alcohol cost money and alcohol played a vengeful role in the story of my family. With this, my father had planned well. With him, he brought a cup full of lemonade. I’d come to learn this is called a chaser. He handed me one of those small glasses that have only one purpose: To be thrown back into your throat as quickly as possible. He held up his glass, told me to just drink it as fast as I could, and then take a sip of lemonade. He made a quick toast, signifying the shared knowledge of just how much this all sucked, and we drank.

As I blanched my mouth with lemonade, I noticed he poured another glass. Then another. I told my dad my blood felt warm. We sat in the garage and laughed. He told me of the hell he had given us and how he didn’t know what to do anymore. He spoke of how that moment was the first moment of joy he’s had in years. We went inside, I went to bed, and a couple of months later, my parents were divorced.

As I would sit in Pasadena, I would often wonder about my childhood home.

I longed for it. We had created a masterpiece for our family to grow together in. When my dad called me to tell me the news of the foreclosure, the regret and hatred emerged once more. I had already felt the death of the family I had once known and loved. Now I was facing the death of the last piece of materiality that connected me to that lifeless abode.

However, when my father called, he also shared something else — he was coming to visit and he had something for me.

We met him at Union Station. I waited for my father whom I hadn’t seen in what felt like forever as various passengers got off to catch their next train. He had not yet met his two-month-old grandson and we hadn’t seen each other since the house was gone. Finally, his feet hit Californian soil.

As he held his grandson for the first time, he handed me his bag and told me to look inside. I reached in and felt solid glass. I looked at him suspiciously as he told me to pull it out. It was a tequila bottle. But it wasn’t a new one.

I immediately recognized the weathered glass. It was the bottle we shared that night in the garage. But there was something else. Inside that relic of a container was not an amber-gold liquid.

There was a bunch of dirt with a note.

The note explained how sorry he was for our family and for our home and how, knowing I no longer had a home on that ancestral property, he brought some of that home to me — dirt from the yard that held the last of my memory and my identity and my family.

I treasured that bottle. It represented my life in a profoundly real way. Yet, as I eventually moved back to Ohio and had my own home, I tucked it away in the overly efficient closet. The pain was still there.

As I fumbled through the neglected space, I realized I was neglecting part of my past. Sometimes, the physical death of a person can be easier than the existential death of a life that is still visible yet utterly impossible.

So, that day, in the middle of post-Christmas cleaning, I made a choice.

I took the bottle to my office where a picture sits — the last picture my family ever took together — and I placed the dirt-filled tequila bottle next to it as a visceral reminder of a fractured family, a lost home, and the wounds they had caused. I chose to remember what has gone wrong. Sometimes, I look at that bottle and picture and I get angry. Sometimes, I am devastated by the futile future I hoped for. But then, I often remember what was good, what was bad, and hope that, maybe, I can do better if I learn from those who have gone before me.

Shortly after finding that bottle, I found myself driving to my old home with my three children.

My dad, unfortunately, still occupies my grandma’s house; having to stare at the beautiful home he created and no longer owns. I always had hoped that I’d be driving to that property with my children in the anticipation of joy. Now, I was driving to share with my children the narrative they, too, are a part of.

We pull into my dad’s driveway — once a shared pathway between two homes of unadulterated love and connection — and I can’t help but cry. I feel ten years old again, seeing myself walk over to my grandma’s to get the hidden key and fill her house with firewood while she is gone. I imagine myself playing with my friends in the yard before jumping in the pool. I then dream that, at this very moment, I am sitting by the pool as my children swim at the Kleeberger homestead, drinking tequila and chasing it with lemonade.

But none of it is real.

What is real, however, is that I show my children where they come from — the wounds, the joys, and the difficulty. I share the stories about their great-grandmother and about my family. I take them on a journey to what is dead; because, in some ways, that’s still alive.

Something leaves and it leaves something behind.

We still have that.

In the face of loss, what you do with that something is what matters the most.

And, often, it is the only thing you can do.