Selling My Grandparents’ Home Is Like Losing Them Again

Its water was never cold, it was “refreshing.” That’s what my Oma always said about the lake. In her soft Austrian accent she would declare it “refreshing,” even when it was so freezing we would gasp after jumping in.

My grandparents bought a plot of land right on that lake in upstate New York in the 1960s, and I have been going there since I was born. Some of my earliest memories are of Oma sitting in a lawn chair on the uneven deck, eyes closed, tanning herself to a burnished olive while Opa played chess with my brother at a table nearby.

When they bought the land there was almost........

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