To say that things progressed relatively quickly between us is probably true, though it never felt like we were rushing anything. We first met on August 27, we closed on our house less than a year later, on July 6, and it all felt perfectly reasonable. (At this point, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that at least a few of you reading likely contributed to us getting the house in question. Hopefully, beyond the many expressions of gratitude made at the time, the following account will better convey exactly what it all meant to her. Please keep that in mind while reading what follows.)
I don’t remember when, exactly, we decided to start looking for a house together, but I remember why. While it’s probably obvious why any couple would look for a home to share, we had primarily practical reasons. I was working two jobs at the time, looking to pay off as many bills as possible before starting nursing school, while taking one or two pre-reqs per semester. She also worked, had Brynn’s care, feeding, and extracurriculars to juggle, and, of course, more doctors’ appointments than the average person. Then, once nursing school began I’d have a full-time class and clinicals schedule to go with the one full-time job I’d keep. Basically, if we wanted to see each other at all, we’d kind of have to live together. So, we decided we would, and that was pretty much that. (Also, her apartment was pretty small, with Brynn’s room not much bigger than some walk-in closets I’ve seen.)
While I did already have a house, it wasn’t in the best school district, which mattered far more with Teen Brynn on hand than it did when it was just me living there. If it weren’t frustrating, it would’ve been funny just how hard the district line had to veer to seemingly intentionally exclude basically just my street from a much better school district, all gerrymandering-like. With her mom’s illness-necessitated relocations, Brynn had bounced from schools in Florida to Kentucky and back a few times. With some stability finally within reach, Shawntel wanted her to be able to stay at Beachwood until she graduated. So, to the Fort Mitchell housing market we looked!
And looked. And looked. By now, everyone knows how miserable it is to look for a house. A hyper competitive market, starting the bid at or well above the already-inflated asking price, and a promising house going ‘Pending’ an hour after you see the listing, before you’ve had a chance to even schedule a viewing. That’s the norm now, but, hipster-like, I guess, that was Fort Mitchell in 2015. Or always, probably. That relatively small area having its own Benz dealership should’ve been a tip-off.
In a nutshell, looking for a house in Fort Mitchell sucked. We managed to set foot inside one place that we could kind of afford, and that was a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house that, honestly, just wasn’t big enough. Or even close to big enough. Not that we didn’t make a serious run at talking ourselves into it, ‘cause we did. We really did. Ultimately, though, paying more than we wanted for a place that wasn’t big enough just didn’t seem smart, Beechwood be damned. The only other place we viewed - a townhouse, and it, for a little while, it seemed like we might actually end up there - turned out to have aluminum wiring that needed to be replaced, and a price tag that didn't reflect that. Ultimately, it was another place we were trying to talk ourselves into.
Throughout our search, I’d occasionally send her houses from outside Fort Mitchell. Most of those emails she never opened, because, well, they weren’t in Fort Mitchell. I was largely keeping an eye on longshot eastern Cincinnati areas like Mariemont or Madeira, where we also probably couldn’t afford anything. I liked the idea of being close to the bike trail, and the school districts were just as good as Beechwood. (Frickin’ snooty Eastsiders.) One that she did open, though, was on the west side. Less than a mile from the house I already owned, but in the Oak Hills school district, and just listed that day. At a glance, Shawntel really liked the house. Enough so that she showed the listing to Brynn. Brynn saw a pool, therefore, Brynn loved the house. It had a dishwasher, too, which her apartment did not. That was at least as important to Brynn as the pool. Also, it turned out that Brynn really wasn’t really enthralled by the idea of staying at Beechwood for five more years.
Through Shawntel’s high school friend, realtor extraordinaire, Sara Foltz, we set up a viewing. We went, we saw, and we still loved it. If I remember right, that was on a Thursday, and an open house was scheduled for that Sunday. Sara gave us a heads-up that the house was getting serious interest, and that we should make our first offer our best offer, and to do it rightnow, as it probably wouldn’t last until the open house.
So, we did. We made our best offer – close to, but still below the asking price; ah, those were the days, weren’t they? – and, as we were driving to Louisville to pick up a boxer then-named Romeo whose family had literally voted him out, Sara called to say that our offer had been accepted. We got our house and our beloved pooch, Romie, on the same day.
Of course, we didn’t get the house that day. No, that took about seven more weeks, and was easily the most enraging closing process I’d been through. The first two places I bought – plus one refinancing – had all gone smoothly, with nary a headache. This one, though? The less said the better. Anywho…
Despite wanting to rage-quit the process many times, we ultimately jumped through every hoop and ended up with the house we wanted. More importantly, it was the house that she wanted. Shawntel really did love the place, and right from the start. Sure, she was only initially open to the idea because Brynn wanted it, but with that approval in hand, she was free and clear to just love the place for herself. In hindsight, I think a big part of that was that, after getting sick, she’d probably figured that she’d never own her own home. She’d had dorm rooms or apartments since leaving for college, and was living in an apartment while in grad school when she was diagnosed. Once she got to the point in her treatment where she could no longer work, she and Brynn had to move in with her mother, and, on separate occasions, two different friends. Considering that she’d only recently been cleared to work part-time – and her strength and health really didn’t permit much more than that – I’m sure buying a house was the furthest possibility from her mind. Hell, she’d only found an affordable apartment in Fort Mitchell, small as it was, due to an extraordinarily unlikely chain of acquaintances and happenstance.
Yet, as of July 6, 2015, she was taking the keys to her own house, and one that she loved rather than just one we could afford. Built in 1910, it had its warts, sure, but that’s also why we could afford it. The wood comprising the back deck, back fence, and front porch was all aging, and would need replacing sooner than later. The pool liner had visible holes. Of the two complete HVAC systems, literally nothing was newer than twenty-two years old. The driveway needed to be resealed within a couple of months. Yadda, yadda, yadda. None of it really mattered then, though, and that never changed. She loved her house.
She also loved holidays. Those of you moderately close to her probably know that. Over the five-plus years we lived in the house, she liked decorating for Halloween, Xmas, and even Thanksgiving a bit, though it’s more difficult to find decent Thanksgiving decorations. We hosted a couple of ugly sweater parties, and she had a trophy picked out and on hand for the winner of the next one, whenever COVID and/or her health would've allowed.
Being permanent, they were multi-season, any-occasion lights, but that’s not really a term. So, for Xmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and any other occasion over the next year-plus for which she felt festive, our house was lit. Literally, though. Not whatever The Kids mean when they say that. If they still say that. From Thanksgiving through New Year’s, she’d play with the app and schedule each night’s displays, and make new ones for better holiday diversity. During this year’s Super Bowl, the lights were orange chasing black, which is also what she would’ve done, because she made that sequence in the app, for a random game a year earlier. It doesn’t just come with a Bengals sequence, you know.
Then there are the dogs. Even they are strongly linked to her and her house. I’ve already mentioned Romie, and he was pretty much my doing. I grew up with boxers, two of my brothers had boxers, and I’d long wanted another one once I was sure I could properly take care of one. While I was still working long hours, Shawntel and Brynn were now on hand, so I found Romie. Shawntel wasn’t really a dog person, but Romie won her over to the extent that we now have two other boxers. Those last two are mostly her doing. We had the room and the yard, and the dog in question at the time needed a home. Those were the two pillars of her opening pitch, with sad/cute pictures soon to follow (or precede). Ella was living outside in a pen after her owners couldn’t breed her anymore, and Duke was at the pound, looking sickly and scrawny. Not that she ever stopped looking at and sending other needy pooch pics.
She made various attempts at gardening, but usually didn’t have the sustained energy and/or health to make anything stick for too long. We did have homegrown green onions for a little while, and her army of potted rescue succulents were mostly easy enough for her to maintain up until the end. It was mentioned in her memorial post, but, on the morning of April 7, as we were getting into the car to leave, she did remark on her favorite tree being in bloom. “Look how pretty the tree is.” Even leaving for what turned out to be the last time, the house made her happy.
And that’s where she is now, at home. A natural question to ask following someone’s cremation is what to do with the ashes. While she’d long made known that she wanted them spread in Red River Gorge at a spot her family had frequented in her youth she hadn’t spoken of that recently, even with her health seemingly irreversibly in decline. Also, in the nearly seven years we were together, we’d never gone to the Gorge, or even talked about making plans to do so. Undoubtedly, a key reason for that is that she was simply not able to do the things that you tend to do when visiting the Gorge. She was taxed by walking on even the slightest incline, so a genuine hike was out of the question, as was swimming. Even going there wasn’t medically advisable, as she couldn’t even drink well water when in a rural enough building, and her ultimate cause of death was the result of a fungal infection that the rest of us fight off regularly without even knowing we’re doing it.
At first, I felt a bit defensive when answering the aforementioned question by saying that Brynn and I planned to keep Shawntel home. Sure, part of it was because we didn’t feel ready to part with her ashes by whenever we figured the memorial would take place, and, to be clear, if Brynn had insisted that we take her to the Gorge right away, that’s what we would’ve done. In time, though, staying put just seemed to make more sense. Virtually all of her talk about spreading her ashes came before we lived in this house. As if what I’ve written above wasn’t indication enough, she did explicitly say from time to time, “I love this house,” on various occasions (some of which may or may not have involved watching foxes frolic in the back yard).
Given all of that, I no longer feel defensive in having decided to keep her with us, at least for as long as we’re still in this house. If and when it’s no longer mine or Brynn’s or either of ours, we can always take her to the Gorge then, to stay. While she never said as much, there is ample reason to believe that her wishes had changed, rather than my inability to part with her being the reason for going against what she had told her family and closest friends in those first several years after being diagnosed. (You’d think we’d have made a point to clarify this prior to her passing, but, while she had been declining, it was still surprisingly sudden, and it certainly wasn’t supposed to happen right after a fairly routine medical procedure.)
I’m only now able to begin thinking about what the house should be without her. Most of her stuff is still here, and mostly where she left it. Much like becoming less strict in our COVID-precautions following her death felt simultaneously liberating and like a betrayal, it’s difficult to think about what to do with the spaces that were mostly/completely hers, and that was so much of this place. We’ll figure that out over time, though, and we do have time. Brynn and I figure to be here for a while, and, as long as we’re here, she’ll be here, too.
