You can’t go home again?

Not really. Tend to carry my memories with me and places sharpen them.

It's understandable as you are there to visit friends and family. It seems familiar as you still have ties there yet you don't belong as you did.

‘THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY: THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY THERE.’ The immortal first line to L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between wistfully condenses the problems inherent to memory and history.''

You remember this place as it was. It isn't anymore.

*Nananar’ my mum and dad died in the same year within 6 months of each other This happened 10 years ago they lived less than half a mile from me I have never been able to go down their road in all those 10 years I can’t bear to see their house with some one else In it so I understand completely

I think this is really normal

BlueBelle - and two years before my DH’s illness developed my parents died within ten weeks of each other - and I’m an only child. I feel the same way about their home and environs.

I m an only child too nanamar it’s very tough isn’t it ?

I've gone to look at my childhood home and houses I've lived in as an adult. It's very painful. I struggle going to the city I grew up in, now my mum has died.

That’s a perfect quite M0nica - and so I just downloaded the book which sounds like a good one to read during my COVID isolation period.

Sorry I meant to write a perfect “quote” not “quite”

It will be 30 years tomorrow since my Mum died, after a cruel and protracted illness. She always said that she loved the years she lived in Harrogate with my Dad and me (as a baby). She wasn’t ill yet and had her future before her. I actually find great comfort in standing outside our old house when I’m there, even though it’s divided into flats now. Other houses my parents lived in when they moved back to Durham don’t bother me at all.

There is a rather beautiful German song.

It is an old song, from the 1800s, so this was an issue well before we were born.

I hope this helps.

LINK > Nach meiner Heimat, da zieht's mich wieder (3 minutes 25 seconds)

There are a number of versions by various performers available on YouTube.

LINK > Lyrics in German

Here is a translation of the lyrics.

Mostly from Google translate, but slightly adapted by me.

I'm drawn back to my homeland
It's still the old homeland
2x:
The same lust, the same happy songs,
And everything is different.

The waves roar like they did years ago,
In the forest the deer jump like they once did.
2x:
From afar I hear homeland bells ringing,
The mountains shine white like snow.

At the edge of the forest, there is a little house,
Then the mother went in and out.
2x:
Now strangers look out the windows -
Once upon a time there was my father's house.

It seems to me as if it were calling from afar:
Flee, flee and never come back!
2x:
those you loved and what you liked to have,
They are no more - the luck is gone!

I know how you feel you lost that connection to your past but you have your memories. I live a ten minute walk through woods from my childhood home. When my dad was alive if he knew I was going to visit with my then little children. He would wait at the gate to greet us no matter what the weather was like. That memory still brings tears to my eyes I loved both of my parents but I adored my dad. When he suddenly died my mum carried on living there but the house meant nothing to me then. My mum ended up in a home only around the corner from their house. I have fond memories that will never leave me I never go to see the house no reason to now.

I don’t think you can truly ever go back. We’ve moved a lot over the years. I still have a hankering for where I was born in Kent but it’s not the same place as it was 40 years ago and I feel a stranger there. There’s a saying that you can never stand in the same river twice, which rings very true for me.

We’ve just left our house of 25 years and are waiting to move to a new home but I have no yearnings to go back. We had our good times there and have handed it on to another family and that’s enough for me.

I emigrated to N.America. I return to the UK to stay my son and visit friends in the town where I previously lived with my late husband and children for 20 + years.
When I walk by our old house it feels good to remember raising a family there and I am thankful that a nice family enjoys living there now. My UK friends ask, "When are you coming home?" but I agree with Monica's post and "There's no going back" for me.
Happy memories but having taken up the challenge of moving here, adapting to a different life and culture, pursuing new interests with new friends I am happy here.

I moved to another city in my early 40s and never returned to live in my native Liverpool. I have often gone back to see my sibling and great nieces and nephews. However I dont feel any reall connection with any of the places I used to know.

I took a trip one day to the house where I was born and grew up in the 1950s/1960s. The streets (little back to back terraces) are still there but changed out of all recognition as the houses have obviously been modernised and improved. My sister and I stood outside the house where we were born. Of course we didnt knock but the current owner noticed us there and came out to ask if we wanted something. (She thought we were someone official). When I told her we wre both born in this house and now live elsewhere she invited us in. However my sister quickly declined and wanted to hurry away so I thanked her and we left.

My sis later said she could not bear to go into the house because it reminded her so much of her childhood and the fact that both our parents died within 2 years of one another.

I moved away from where I grew up and had my children about 20 years ago. My mum still lives in the area as doesmy brother. I would never go back to live there, there are happy memories but the past is the past and I’m happy where I am now. I visit, but it’s not home and hasn’t been for a long time. To me home is where you live, not where you grew up.

A lot of places have changed radically.

A lot of it as a consequence of the Conservative government's right-to-buy policy for council house tenants.

Roads which once had uniform front doors, uniform windows, grey drainpipes and so on are now a glorious mixture, coupled with less of "magnolia mind" officialdom over uniformity. For example, I know of one road where the council changed the front doors of each of the houses that they still owned and gave each tenant an individual choice of door style and colour.

The rise of garden centres also contributed. Many gardens now have quite large often exotic trees these days as people planted a then small tree bought from a garden centre perhaps twenty or thirty years ago.

I have been back a few times to places I have previously lived, but never inside the house. I wouldn’t want to. I am interested in the changes in the surroundings though.
For me what makes a place is the people. It is rarely possible to go back and find the same people. I have been back to a previous church and there was hardly anyone I knew. I have been back to a previous choir, which I enjoyed as the choirmaster was the same and there were lots of people I knew, but before long, too much time passes and it all changes.
We need to live in the present and enjoy what is happening in the present. Hopefully we have good memories from the past, and will have good times ahead of us to enjoy.