Nothing is the same after you move away

This house is ours for 4 more days. In 3 days, it will be filled from floor to ceiling with boxes, ready for the moving truck. In 3 days, it will be filled with packers invading our space. In two days, the cabinet specialist is coming to measure the kitchen for the new cabinets that will be put in after we leave. In fact, not much will be the same after we leave. The hospital tile will go, to be replaced with new wood floors and carpet in the bedrooms. The gold flecked counter tops will be torn out and replaced by something probably not so colorful. I think our wonderful kitchen that takes up 1/3 of the house will be partitioned off so there's room for a new laundry room. They're even doing away with the detachable dishwasher.
Nothing is the same after you move away.
Even the neighbors are moving, almost all of them, this summer. Soon there won't be anyone on the block who really knows us, who can tell the new people who move in to our old place stories about roasting marshmallows over our backyard fireplace, or how TJ used to terrorize the younger kids, or how all the kids would come over to our house to make cookies.
Nothing is the same after you move away.
I wonder who will wind up with the swingset? The wooden one that the people who lived here before us bought, and gave to their neighbors 3 years ago, who gave it to the neighbors on the other side of us when they left, who gave it to us. We'll pass it along to the neighbors as we leave, but they aren't far behind us.
Nothing is the same after you move away.
I wonder if there will be any trace of us left here after we leave. Seems funny to just move on without putting down roots of any kind, without leaving any hint that we were here (I mean besides the broken bits of frisbee buried in the mud in the backyard). I've scrubbed the walls pretty well, so I don't think there will be handprints left. This has been an important place for us. We survived a deployment here. We got stronger here. Emma and Nathan call this place home. Now we are just supposed to clear out of here and take everything with us?
Are home and family really so separate and distinct?
Maybe there will be a few footprints left, footnotes left of our life here. Clues that anyone with a hankering for archeology could figure out. A bead here (from Emma's famous beaded socks), a lego there...
Maybe the new occupants will wander down the hall and hear the tinkling of the piano or mandolin not knowing where it was coming from.
Or maybe they will step through the door and love the place, from the new wooden floorboards to the ceiling - just really love it, and say, "Now this is a place my family can call home." because we have.