Good things, too

When this year began, I knew it would be challenging for me because of several significant anniversaries over the year. However, not all of them have been negative, and today is one of the better ones.

Five years ago today, my contract to purchase my house went unconditional , and that meant that I’d officially bought the house. That was eleven and a half weeks after Nigel died, and even then it was obvious it was the most important step in building whatever my life would become.

Some things changed before settlement, when I got the keys, starting with the date. Originally, settlement was to be on January 24, which was the anniversary of the civil union ceremony in 2009. Because the house was newly built, the settlement date was originally set to allow time for Hamilton City Council to do the final inspection and issue what’s called a “code compliance certificate” (CCC), which means everything complies with code. The CCC must be issued before a house can be sold.

The CCC came in a little earlier than expected, so I asked to move up the settlement date, and the builder agreed. To be honest, I didn’t need to get into the house earlier, I wanted to.

I was impatient to get to Hamilton to be around family, and getting the house earlier gave me time to get it ready: I had a heat pump installed in my bedroom and data cabling throughout the house. I also met with the company that did the window coverings, something I knew would take several weeks. I got the keys on January 10, 2021.

A couple weeks earlier, I contacted a moving company to move me to Hamilton, and with a professional house staging company to stage the house to help sell it. The move out was on my birthday, and the move in was the following day. And that was the point where my Hamilton adventure began.

Meanwhile, the house I’d moved out of sold some weeks later, and I signed the paperwork to complete the sale on March 19. Settlement for that house was the next day, March 20—six months to the day since Nigel died. The following Wednesday, New Zealand went under the first Covid lockdown, and the very reason I moved to Hamilton—to be able to get together with family—was taken away from me. I wasn’t actually upset about that, though, because that first Lockdown was new and interesting, and, anyway, I had plenty to do around the house.

Next month, then, will mark five years that I’ve been living in this house. And that’s a significant and good one, too. Good things happen all the time, too, after all.