Former house owner

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a little while.
When we were closing we met with the man who owned our house for 30 years. He was a very kind soul. He was pretty adamant that he wanted to close at the same time we did. We all were at the title company and he told us stories about the house. His wife was the one who planted the roses and the mini magnolia bushes. Our lot is bigger than most of the other lots in the neighborhood because there is a finite amount of room in between the two streets. So, there is a road ... houses ... then road. There is not enough room for 4 houses, but there is way too much room for 2. Therefore, they put three houses in between the roads. It allowed for bigger lots for those 3 houses. We are the middle house. The neighbor to the east is a complete busybody. There are 2 fences between our yard and their yard. Not sure why. But, they've all ready peeked through both of the yards to look at McKenzie! Trust me, this is no small feat. They also knew exactly what we were going to be doing with the yard. How? They pumped the people we hired for the lawn for information! Anyway, back to our sweet old former house owner. Once we had closed. He stood up, shook John's hand, and then proudly handed over the keys to him. He came across the room to give me a hug. I felt like he was blessing John and me to take over his home and to be happy in it.