It's Went Down

As sad as it is for me to watch, Henry's house no longer stands. Henry and his wife lived in the house across the street when we moved into ours. It wasn't long after we moved into our home that Henry's wife was admitted to the nursing home. She has spent the last decade there while Henry took care of the house and the lawn at their place. The house belonged to Henry's wife when they married and it was his wife's decision to leave the house to her own daughter in the event of her death. I guess to make it simpler, Henry's wife decided to go ahead and place the home in her daughters name sooner rather than later.
Last fall, Henry had to spend a few weeks in the nursing home for rehabilitation after a surgery. While recovering, his step daughter-in-law deemed the home uninhabitable and had Henry evicted. Thank goodness Henry had a good friend that found him an apartment and moved his belongings so that he would have a place to live once he was released from the nursing home.
Henry's daughter in law immediately began the negotiations to sell the property. She warned the church that she had a buyer that wanted to place apartments on the property. This was in an effort to convince the church that the opportunity was "now or never" to purchase the property for themselves. Being as Henry's house adjoined the church parking lot, they went through with the purchase to ensure piece of mind.
What I would have liked to seen happen, was for the church to approach Henry and offer to let him move back in. Henry's life expectancy is minimal, as he is in his elder years and has health problems. Henry would have much rather spent his last years "at home" rather than in some dreary apartment.
Anyway, what I had hoped for, was not the reality. Instead, the church made the purchase, gave permission for the SWAT team to practice emergency drills with it for about a month. Once that subsided, the church gave a couple of men permission to strip the house of any metal, copper etc. After the two men ripped off the gutters, tore down the carport support beams, knocked holes in the foundation to pull out the water pipes etc., the house looked like this.

It sat there for about six weeks until the church decided to let the youth group have a demolition party. They knocked down anything they could, busted out windows and then spray painted bulls eyes to throw tomato's at the house. We have looked at that ugly mess for about  a month, all the while I thought "Henry would be heartbroken if he seen this".

On Tuesday this week, they dropped off the bulldozer.
Wednesday, the house came down.

Thursday, they loaded up the mess.

And today they finished the job.

I am glad to see everything cleaned up, but it still bothers me that Henry's home is gone and Henry is stuck in an apartment somewhere here in town. I wonder if Henry's stepdaughter ever thinks about Henry or if she is just glad to have the cash in hand?