The listing for our house went live this morning. I have only cried twice. Maybe three times.

Jonathan and I are now sitting outside at the Dogtooth Café while strange people judge the suitability of our Eden for their own purposes. In a while, we will go up into the mountains and stare at the sky. But for the moment, I have to be somewhere with cellphone coverage so that I can approve appointments through the appointments app. It is all hideous.

We did the last things this morning at dawn -- putting down the edging in the garden, weeding the front flower beds. Our little house is ready now, as best it can be, to make its way in the world without us.

I wonder whether all the years of joy we had in it -- all the bedtime stories and sudden delight at morning glories and cups of tea in the evenings and the hidden messages we wrote under the kitchen tile we put down and the long, slow summer afternoons when we did nothing much but we did it together -- will all of that have somehow soaked into the house so that the people who go into the house will sense it there? Will 26 years of love make itself felt? Will the ghosts of our hearts haunt the place even when we're gone?