Our home, our commitment

Every month, I'd pay the mortgage and then tell Sandy how much we still owed on the principal of the loan. She'd whoop and holler, especially when it dropped low enough that we could envision actually having it paid off.

Sexy asbestos suit, eh? Yes,she zipped it up
before we scraped the ceiling!

It became even more important to Sandy when she had to quit working and depend on disability payments last year. We reworked our finances, figured out how to make it work, and I wasn't all that concerned. But Sandy was obsessed by the idea that she could never increase her income - that even if she lived to retirement age, she'd still be receiving the same disability payments. She looked for small income opportunities. For example, she participated in a few focus groups for $50 Amazon gift certificates. She talked about selling some of her books. She was looking forward to moving to Medicare, which goes into effect after two years on disability. But she really focused on the mortgage. As soon as we'd paid it off, we'd have a little more money left in the checking account each month and be able to make home repairs or have a weekend away more often.

Our last mortgage payment was scheduled for this coming March. I thought briefly about paying off the mortgage while she was in hospice care, but I didn't want to leave her for very long. Now that I know I could have handled it with a phone call, I wish I had. I wished I'd been able to tell her that it was taken care of, been able to celebrate with her, at any level, while she was still conscious.

I paid it off today. She wasn't alive to see it, but it was important to me to make that final payment while her name is still on the title of the house that was her home. Together, we transformed many parts of the house and yard over the years to make it our own

I'm going to be closing out her estate next week, and removing her name from the title of the house. I know that will be painful. It's still her home. Our home. But leaving her name on the title would make selling the house complicated in the future, whether I'm selling it or my heirs are.

People have told me it's just a piece of paper, but it was an important piece of paper to both of us. It was a symbol of our commitment to each other at a time that we had no legal recognition. We were asked several times if we were going to have a commitment ceremony, and we said then that the mortgage-signing had been our ceremony.

So the house is paid off now. It's ours, not the credit union's. And next week, it'll legally become mine alone.

These past three and a half months, everything is wrong - even the things that were supposed to be a cause for celebration.