Farewell party (Five minutes freewrite)

They all knew that day would come. Time to get rid of the old house. At last! They'd all come to hate it - with it's tall drafty rooms that were never warm even if you kept the fire on day and night. And the stairs! God, they hated those stairs and the shaky banister so much that they had to resume themselves to living on the ground floor. Every week they'd wait for Rick and Elsa to come to lunch on Sunday and have them fetch things stranded in the no-man's-land upstairs.
'Elsa, dear, could you run upstairs and look for my green sweater? It must be in the wardrobe, right there on the top shelf'.
Their daughter in law was such a lovely girl, such a blessing in their old age. But now, Rick had decided the house must go and damn right he was.
Not before one last party!

Gregory West was wearing his old tuxedo which he'd cleaned as best he could with a damp cloth, while Francine had put on her favorite blue dress, the one with lace trimmings, and just one string of pearls. Fake, obviously, but who cared?
Not the guests who had their own worries, trying to hide the occasional moth-bite in their finest clothes. Emily's fur coat was a joke, with her husband calling it the 'bald-fox deluxe'.
'Oh, the old gramophone... we haven't played that in years. Let's dance!' Only Emily could come up with such an idea!
They searched everywhere and managed to find only an old Louis Armstrong record. A bit scratched, but it will have to do.
Gregory had always been a fine dancer and managed to move gracefully even now, carefully avoiding to bump into the small tables full of a lifetime's worth of random knickknacks, most of them cheap china figurines bought at flea-markets and souvenirs from some holiday abroad.
The wine decanter was real crystal, as Gregory was a connoisseur when it came to drinks. He'd rather cut back on meat or fruit, rather than buy a cheap wine. And he still managed to get to a ripe old age!

It was a great party, full of laughter at old family jokes and the simple joy of being together again. The only off note was the noise of the constant traffic. All that honking, the random curse - some people have no respect!
They were all keeping a nervous eye on the busy street, waiting for the white moving van to show up and break up their little gathering.
Without a sound, they huddled under the trees on the other side of the street watching the men loading their belongings in the van!
'All in all, we've had a good life', Gregory summed it up. As the saying goes - 'It was fine while it lasted'.
And they were gone.

Story written for @mariannewest's freewrite challenge. Today's prompt was: party! Check out her blog and join our freewrite community.
Images are my own.