Last night around 12:30 in the morning was the last time I’ll ever step foot in the home where I grew up. After forty-one years my mother finally made the tough decision to downscale to a smaller, more affordable place for the sake of long-term retirement planning and easier living space management.

My wife, my son, and I spent six hours Saturday helping her pack and fifteen hours Sunday helping her move. With just the four of us working on it, and with her unable to lift anything heavier than a bag of groceries, it was extremely slow going. By the time I called it a night around 1 a.m., I could hardly stand to look at my old bedroom anymore. That was partly because I was tired of being there, partly because I was just plain tired, and partly because by the time we hollowed it out…well, as my son put it while we stood there surveying the room one last time, it looked like the set of a disturbing horror film.

This was the room that was once covered in posters, from comic shop giveaways to Cracked Magazine inside-cover gags to full-sized posters I liked enough to buy for four or five dollars apiece. My personal favorite, now lost, was a Bill Sienkiewicz New Mutants poster I wish I still had. While moving, I was surprised to find one oldie still tacked inside one of the bookshelves: a Marvel poster painted by Tom Palmer, highlighting the second year of their “New Universe” after the events of The Pitt and one single explosion changed said universe forever.

This was the room where I passed the summer days listening to records, Mom’s old 45s as well as my own singles from 1983 to 1985. 45s were 3-for-$5 at most record shops. It didn’t take long to build up a pile of Top-40 hits and occasional quirky hits. Sure, I bought the famous stuff (Michael Jackson and Billy Joel were staples during that time frame), but I also appreciated tunes clearly crafted off the beaten path like “Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly)” or “The Politics of Dancing” or “Major Tom (Coming Home)” or “Fields of Fire”. Little did I realize these isolated singles were signposts toward where my musical tastes would bend in the years ahead.

This was the room where I watched Adam West and Burt Ward on weekday afternoons in syndicated reruns that taught important lessons about morality, justice, and manners. Batman and Robin were the role models from whom I took notes while other preschoolers were hoping Sesame Street would help them come to terms with the alphabet.

This was the room that would serve as my recording studio when I got my first tape player. Sometimes my friends and I would make up our own radio dramas and comedies. If they weren’t around, I was taping songs off the radio or entire episodes of The Muppet Show from a portable black-‘n’-white TV. Years before we had our first VCR I’d created my own Muppet library of episodes featuring hosts like Gene Kelly, Sandy Duncan, Ben Vereen, Valerie Harper, and whoever Wally Boag was. But the very first thing I ever taped was a Woody Woodpecker cartoon called “Convict Concerto”, whose captivating classical soundtrack remained a mystery to me until years later, when I learned the name of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2.

This was the room I fled to many times in eighth grade to end the school day by lying on my bed and crying. Sometimes with music, sometimes without. Eighth grade sucked. Eighth graders sucked. Teachers sucked. Cute eighth-grade girls who liked dumb guys sucked. I sucked. Everything about that year really, really, really, really, really sucked.

This was the room where I could open a second-story window and listen to the peaceful harmonies of crickets and birds at night without my grandma panicking about burglars taking advantage.

This was the room where I watched The Simpsons on Thursdays for one season while everyone else was watching The Cosby Show downstairs, or on Sundays all the other years while Grandma used the main TV to keep up with Murder, She Wrote. This same upstairs TV was my portal into other shows no one else liked — Friday Night Videos, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, In Living Color, et al. The schism that my entertainment choices create between myself and others goes way, way back.

This was the room that held my first several thousand comics, from Scooby-Doo #9 to G.I. Joe #2 to post-Crisis Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire Justice League to the early issues of Todd McFarlane’s Spawn. The room was littered with cardboxes of all shapes and sizes, some of which were transferred over time to acid-free longboxes, just like the dedicated investors use.

This was the room whose brick walls were better soundproofing against windstorms than any form of suburban milk-carton siding I’ve yet encountered.

This was the room I abandoned when I moved out at age 21 during my young-stupid-male phase.

This was the room that contained my safe little corner away from the world, whenever the world wasn’t in the mood to hang out with me.

This is the room I’ll never see again.

This was one of several rooms we had to have emptied out by Monday morning. With not nearly enough help and no access to the sort of rigorous military training that would’ve better prepared us for grueling experiences, we accomplished the mission and reduced the room to four walls, several gross drywall stains, that grade-school chair in the photo (a third-grade gift from an aunt and an unbreakable step stool), a couple of ancient wall hangings, leftover wire hangers, and enough pounds of dust to reconstruct into one mean hyperallegenic bodysuit.

The physical toll will take days to subside. As of this morning my arms and legs were large sausages. My face and neck were sunburned into immobility. My fingers are practically arthritic from hours and hours of grabbing, gripping, carrying, balancing, unscrewing, reassembling, truck driving, tearing, shredding, tossing, and shaking my fist at the sky while cursing whatever forces drove my mom to stockpile hundreds of back-breaking hardcover books upon several six-foot bookshelves, to say nothing of the overweight couch that she didn’t know had superdense recliners built into each end. I’m having to take typing breaks every hundred words so that my aching fingers can have moments to recuperate. This is one of those rare times where expressing myself is more painful physically than emotionally.

But the deed is done. The room is relinquished. Another door closes on another set of childhood memories. The few traces and marks I left over the course of twenty-one years are at the mercy of the rental management’s cleaning crew. The next tenant will never know I was there and never know what my little sanctuary meant to me. Soon it’ll be their turn to figure out what that space means to them.

Music for your end credits: Woody Woodpecker performing along to Hungarian Symphony #2.