Will's Musings: Blogging about life's experiences

There are times in life that no matter how sudden, or well planned out, you will never be ready. October 25, 2023 was one of those times.

That’s the day when my brother, Jeff, and I signed papers to sell our childhood home and walked through it for the very last time. We’ve both said we knew this day would eventually come, but man, what a ton of bricks.

Mom and Dad were always very diligent with money. Mom especially, and I always told her money isn’t everything and there are things that it cannot buy. Like something that has been in your family’s possession for 55 years.

It is amazing to think back in less than two months, 54 days to be exact, all that transpired. It was nothing short of divine intervention that all the major pieces fell into place. It had to be. From legal and financial paperwork (don’t get me started on the supreme incompetence of big banks), working with attorneys, watching your childhood house get cleared out, to picking out and deciding which prized possessions to keep — let alone dealing with all the arrangements and administering the estate upon the death of your Mother and all the emotions that come to the grips with both of your parents being gone.

We also lucked out with a realtor who has become a valued friend in the process and who hooked us up with many of the resources and had connections at his fingertips during the many turns in this journey. An absolute “Johnny on the spot.” He was completely invaluable.

As we walked through this now empty, echoey house, it also gave us another gift: The perspective of the blank slate my parents had before they moved in more than 55 years ago.

The new owners are an older couple who have been renting in our hometown for the past 10 years, and from what we understand, cried when they heard we accepted their offer, after being out bid on three other properties before this.

We sold it “as is” and they said they love it as is, but please, you don’t have to spare our feelings. From the wood paneling in the family room and basement, parquet floors in the family room and master bedroom, and a kitchen wall just itching to be busted out to expand the eating area into the dining room, just to name a few, the childhood home was like a time capsule longing for a complete makeover. And I can’t wait to hear what they will do with it.

Sure, to some it is just a house. But it is 55 years old, as old as me, and not only comes with a ton of memories, but a ton of history. As I have mentioned many times before (perhaps ad nauseam for some), our family has a legacy as a founding family in Mount Prospect, IL. This home has been occupied by a small cohort of those who represented a direct decedent of founder William who was a carpenter who built, among other things, the one-room Central School House (that still stands today at 101 S. Maple St.) and also ran a cheese factory at the corner of Northwest Highway (Rt. 14) and Wille Street (yes, that is an actual street that runs throughout town), that subsequently became the site of Wille Hardware, the family business in the 70s run by my Dad, his brothers nephews (my uncles), many of who also are now gone.

As time goes on, unfortunately it seems that legacy seems to mean less and less in this village as it continues to see families grow up and retire and new ones come in. We can only hope its leaders do the right thing and help keep our legacy alive. Mom actually was the very last original owner on the block, and the last Wille living in Mt. Prospect.

Packrats by no means whatsoever, but Mom and Dad did keep everything in their firebox – and by that – I mean everything. From the original mortgage loan papers, to the sell sheet for the house (the model was called “The Regal.” We subsequently coined it the Regal Beagle, LOL), the plat of survey, blueprints, sketches on furniture to buy and where to position it, every original receipt for every major appliance replaced in the house, and the original agreement for “Lot 16 of ‘Town WeGo Park’” built by Arthur J. Greene, which was actually signed six days before I was born. It became a home where not only did I make memories, but so did our kids, the grandkids. What an absolute trip.

For the Wille Family of Mount Prospect, life changed forever on July 13, 2014, then again on September 2, 2023 and finally again, October 25, 2023. Walking out of this house for the final time was life altering to say the least. The transition of this home in our real estate attorney’s office was not as much of a cold environment as I thought it would be, just moving paperwork on another piece of property out of the hundreds of thousands in Mount Prospect and Cook County. The sellers and I am assuming probably the buyers had much more different thoughts and emotions going through their heads as we worked through the mountain of paperwork.

This process has brought me to my knees more times than I can count and taken me to emotional depths I never knew existed. I don’t expect those who have not gone through a similar situation to understand. But what I do expect is that just because the funeral is over, the house is sold and the estate is administered, not to think that this is all over. On the surface, it may seem that way. Far from it. In fact, it’s a new life ahead without either parent, the first holidays without Mom, and on and on. This is going to be a long process.