When it came time to clean out my parents’ house to ready it for sale just over a year ago, my brother Rick was nowhere to be found.

I thought that he and our other two siblings were in agreement that we would sell our 60-year-old family home on the Concord Heights that spring. We had toasted to as much during our usual holiday celebration around my parents’ dining room table the previous Christmas. But when I raised the subject a few months later, Rick objected.

The sale of the house wasn’t urgent, he noted. Our mother, who had moved to an assisted-living facility in Concord, could afford to keep it and she still enjoyed visiting for holiday dinners. As did he.

“Just nostalgia, I guess,” Rick said.

My father had been gone for three years. He and my mother had still lived at home when he fell on the tiled kitchen floor. Already frail from Parkinson’s Disease, he died a few days later in the hospital.

After our mother moved out, we were faced with the question: what do we do with the house? None of us were initially ready to let it go; three out of four of us still lived in the Concord area within a short drive. A modest post-war cape in a neighborhood of similar homes, the house had become such a reliable touchstone that the idea of parting with it felt a little like letting go of a lifeline. When we were there, we inevitably drifted back to the sweet years in the ‘60s and ‘70s when the quiet neighborhood streets were filled with kids.

Kickball games on summer evenings. Wintertime sledding in the cellar holes that were dug into lots awaiting construction. Blueberry picking in the unspoiled pine barrens. Baseball card trading at picnic tables. Days-long Monopoly games on someone’s carport. Ping-pong tournaments and sleepover parties in our basement.

But I gradually came to believe that my father would not have wanted the house he’d been so proud of to sit and deteriorate. The peeling paint on the exterior had become too obvious to ignore. The yard was increasingly overgrown. What once were shrubs were now trees obscuring the front facade.

The friction with Rick kept me up at night. Just 15 months apart in age, Rick and I had always been close, and remained so decades after I’d left New Hampshire. While I became a reporter and he a bartender, our two professions found common ground in a penchant for snarky humor.

Finally, I made what I thought was a reasonable argument. Interest rates were rising and the housing market was showing signs of cooling. It made better financial sense to sell when the market was high, I suggested, then to let the house continue to sit so we could get together there a few times a year.

“Money is the farthest thing from my mind right now,” he shot back.

And then he retreated into silence. I drove to New Hampshire from Connecticut weekend after weekend, filling trash bags and hauling our memories to Goodwill. My brother Darren, after much pondering on his part, agreed it was best to sell. He helped me figure out what else needed doing – an exterior painter, a landscape crew, a house cleaner. My sister Kira, while ambivalent, pitched in as well.

Rick remained absent. This, he told me, was his silent protest.

We listed the house last June, and it sold in two days to an excited young couple. I was so pleased that they were able to find something they could afford. I kept Rick in the text chain reminding everyone that this was their last chance to retrieve anything they might want. Rick dropped in and took some practical items, but when the day came to do the final cleanup, he was not there.

A few days after we reluctantly walked out the front door for the final time, Rick sent me a brief text. Could he still get into the house? He could. He gave no further details. I assumed he just wanted to say his goodbyes.

The real reason came the following day in the form of texted photos of notes he’d handwritten on index cards, one for each room in the house. The cards were posted on the walls for the buyers to see during their final walk-through. Carefully printed love notes to our family home.

The sentiments had a common theme: our space is yours now, and we hope you love and thrive there as we did.

“As children, this was the eating space – we always ate together,” Rick wrote in his ode to the kitchen. “As adults, this was where we opened the wine, chatted, caught up with each other’s lives, and talked about things our parents shouldn’t hear. … Keep the heartbeat going.”

Of the dining room, he recalled that our parents “sat at the end of the long table and oversaw the family they created, reveling in every moment. Lots of laughter, wonderful meals, breaking news, family business. May your clan gather here as well, and forge the same memories.”

Of the master bedroom, he wrote, “This was our parents’ room for almost 60 years. … If spirits reside in this house, this room is where you will find them. But fear not. Love abides here. May it abide with you as well.”

He noted that the ‘70s-era finished basement was called the cellar. “‘Go down cellar!’ was the cry of exasperated parents! When friends came over on a rainy day, this is where we spent hours and hours. This was the kids’ domain.”

Even the house’s single bathroom got a shout out, with Rick marveling at how a family of six coped. “It wasn’t always pretty, but it was managed,” he wrote. “Don’t be scared. History is on your side. (And if someone tries to sneak a smoke out of the window, let it go. Let it go.)”

The buyers, we learned through our agent, loved the notes. And she, a seasoned, no-nonsense businesswoman, allowed that she was moved.

I relayed her sentiments to Rick in a text expressing my awe about his sweet gesture. Silence. I pressed. Was he grieving the sale?

“I’m glad they liked the notes,” he responded. “I don’t know what more to say, really.”

Lisa Prevost is a Concord native. Her three siblings and mother all reside in New Hampshire, in Concord, Gilmanton, Loudon and Merrimack.