Homeless Generations

Gen X and Beyond

My father’s generation, born in the 1950s, were born into stability. This was the era when one could work the same job their whole life, retire comfortably, and build something for the future. When my grandfather sold the family home because he couldn’t keep up on the yardwork anymore, everyone was saddened. There was something deeply comforting about that home that we all lost, even those of us who hadn’t been there in ages.

My father grew up in that house. He moved there at the age of two, and all his childhood memories were of that home. His little sister got married in the yard. There were countless holidays celebrated there, around the same table, with the same people.

I got a taste of that for a few years while my grandmother was still alive, but it ended with her. She passed when I was six. I’m the oldest of my cousins, and the only one with concrete memories of her, and so the only one with memories of that house being the hearth of our family. Gatherings would still happen even after her passing, but they weren’t the same. My grandfather remarried, at the request of his dying wife, and she even blessed his choice. My grandmother was that good of a person — she knew that her husband couldn’t last long without a woman, and she made sure that he would remarry, and who it would be. My grandfather lived another 40 years.

The unconditional love and trust that my grandmother had brought to the family was gone. The new “grandmother” didn’t like children, especially in…