With the best will in the world

It is dreadful to have lived so close to someone for 36 years, and feel no deep affection or sense of loss.  - Eleanor Roosevelt, in a letter to friend Joseph Lash, after the death of her mother-in-law

I'd dreamt of the moment for years.  I imagined taking off my shoes before climbing into the cab, leaving them by the curb in front of the Hades house. Arriving at the airport, I would put on a new pair of shoes, purchased in Victoria, and stride through to check in - since the Ottawa Airport isn't actually in Ottawa.

Through the years, I envisioned this.

It didn't work out that way, of course.  We left our house four days before departing Ottawa.  The cab that took us to the airport drove up a deserted Elgin Street at four in the morning.

Besides, renouncing Hades doesn't involve a clean break.  Elder daughter remains at her job, and has set up an apartment with the Accent Snob not far from Elgin Street, not far from Cooper Street -- where we began our stay seventeen years ago, and ended it.  Elder daughter texted me, saying that she thinks the Accent Snob sensed when we left the city, shoulder-checking and "rooting his paws the whole walk home".  When he first moved to her apartment, he trotted alertly and easily through the downtown streets.

I did a last laundry load in the old house the day before our flight, and wandered through the empty rooms, remembering how I sat on the stairs of our last home in Victoria, weeping heartbrokenly by myself.

This time I felt no pull.

"But this is where your daughters grew up!  This is our childhood!" elder daughter said.  Yes, and seventeen Christmases, Hallowe'ens, Easters, eighteen Thanksgivings.  Birthday parties, homework projects.

I remember Eleanor Roosevelt, and her guilt over feeling no loss for her mother-in-law.  Or was it resignation?

Cities are like people.  Some you love in spite of yourself.  For some, with all the best will in the world, you have no deep affection. No sense of loss, when the time of parting comes.

I tried, Ottawa.  I really did.

On the day before the Hades house passed out of our possession, the Resident Fan Boy, in town for a conference, went with Elder Daughter to remove a few last items.  They wept.

I guess someone has to.