Jackie Cross

When a Home Slides Away, a Family Mourns

By Colleen Mastony

RISMEDIA, November 3, 2010--(MCT)--The yellow brick bungalow on Evergreen Street in Wheaton had three bedrooms, a sun-filled kitchen and a garden of perennials. Perfect for the young couple moving in.

Over the next seven years, the little house became a home, as they filled every room with memories. When they were married, he carried her over the threshold. In the beige bathroom, she saw the positive sign on the pregnancy test. In a corner of the second bedroom, painted lavender and turned into a nursery, their child said her first word.

All of it rushed back with bittersweet vividness on a recent autumn afternoon, as Beth and Tommy Mackie packed their belongings. Both lost their jobs last year. And although both are working again, they had fallen so far behind on the mortgage payments that they couldn't recover. The house went into foreclosure. The Mackies knew it was time to say goodbye.

"There's a lilac bush outside," says Beth, taking a break from the packing to gaze out a window. "You could get the sweet smell in the spring, when you had the window open."

Leaving a home is like that, even under the best of circumstances. Everything elicits a memory. The front door painted red for good luck. The chipmunk that lived in the garden. The window where their now-3-year-old daughter, Lily, waved goodbye to her father every morning and waited for him every night.

"It's the little memories, the silly little things, that mean a lot when you have to let go," Beth says.

There are a lot of people letting go these days. As the foreclosure crisis drags on, 13 percent of mortgages in the eight-county Chicago area are either in foreclosure or delinquent by at least three months, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

This is the story of one family, on the day they left their house behind.

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By 11 a.m., Tommy, a stocky 48-year-old with an easy smile and a ready handshake, has already hauled the first load of furniture to the apartment they've rented across town. Beth, a tall 41-year-old wearing heart-shaped earrings and her blond hair in a pony tail, sits on the front step and waits for him to return. "There are so many people in our situation," she says.

She points down the street, lined with modest split-level homes and shaded by evergreen trees. Two of the houses are empty. A woman across the street is also on the verge of foreclosure. "One friend said, 'It's like we're losing our little neighborhood.'"

Everywhere she turns, she can't help but see moments from the past. There is the spot under the red maple tree where Tommy and Lily sat on summer evenings and watched the wind in the leaves. Here is the side yard where, after Beth's father died, she planted a garden in his memory. "I'm sorry. I'm probably going to cry a lot," she says, her voice breaking.

They hadn't been looking to buy back in 2003, when a friend mentioned that she was selling her house. They decided to stop by and fell in love with the place. The house had wide yard and a crab apple tree by the front door. Inside, there was a full basement, two bathrooms and a kitchen with a picture window overlooking the garden.

It was a big step up from the two-bedroom, basement apartment they had been renting. They scraped together $14,000 to put down on the $280,000 purchase price, and began making the $2,200 monthly payments. Tommy had a good job, working in sales for a company that makes motorcycle accessories. Beth worked as a massage therapist, and took bookkeeping jobs on the side.

After they moved in, she planted marigolds by the front door, and put a birdfeeder outside the kitchen window. Later, when she got pregnant, he surprised her by assembling the crib and rocker. As Lily grew to become a toddler, they recorded her height with black-marker dashes on her bedroom wall.

Then, one evening in March 2009, Tommy came home with a look on his face that made it clear something was wrong. "He made it just inside. I had opened the door for him," Beth recalled. "He said, 'They let me go.'"

Two months later, she fell off their motorcycle and broke her arm. With the sling, she couldn't give massages; that meant they were both out-of-work.

Tommy was unemployed for six months; Beth didn't work for four months. They ran through their meager savings and fell $20,000 behind on the mortgage. They applied for a loan modification, but by the time their application was processed, they were both working again and no longer qualified.

Tommy wanted to fight for the house. But after months of crying and wondering what to do, Beth said this summer that it was time to go. "She would say, 'Wherever you and me and Lily are, that's our home,'" Tommy recalled. "'The important thing is that we're together.'"

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One. Two. Three. Lift. Tommy and a friend carry a dresser down the hallway.

In the living room, Lily holds tight to a stuffed parrot and asks, "Why do we have to leave?" Beth sweeps Lily into her arms and gives her a kiss.

Out the door go the photos of their wedding day, the framed commitment vows that hung in the bedroom, Lily's tricycle and toy box.

They sold the antique cabinet where he kept his father's WWII medals. The oak kitchen table where they once carved pumpkins is gone too, given away in exchange for $75.

The day passes in a flurry of memories. There is the porch light where a bird made a nest every year. Here is Lily's handprint painting of a Thanksgiving turkey from 2009. "I'm thankful for you," it says.

By 6:30 pm, the house is empty.

"I don't want to leave!" Lily yells.

Both Tommy and Beth believe that moving is for the best. They'll be able to get out from underneath the debt and the stress. If they could change anything, they would have saved more money to cushion against uncertainty.

In the living room, they join hands and bow their heads. "Oh divine spirit," Beth begins. "We want to express our gratitude for all the love and memories attached to this house."

"Why are you crying, mom?" asks Lily.

Tommy stretches his arms wide and issues a tender command: "Hug!" The family falls into a tight embrace.

Beth wipes her tears. Lily holds a bag of marbles. Tommy gently guides them to the front step.

They close the door - the one that, years ago, they painted red for good luck - and carefully lock it behind them.

(c) 2010, Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.