'Home Is So Sad'

In 2004 I was my mothers executor and was responsible for dividing up her possessions with my siblings, preparing her house for sale and selling it.
My parents moved into that house when I was just five months old. My mother lived there for sixty-two years, the last fifteen alone.
The following Philip Larkin poem was on my mind as I discharged my duties in that house which had suddenly gone still:

'Home Is So Sad'

'Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the music stool. That vase.'
( Philip Larkin )