Leaving home is never easy and oft filled with nostalgia for all those years of memories. The Beatles reminded us of the intense feelings that leaving home creates with their song, She’s Leaving Home.

Leaving home is tough for teenagers but even more difficult for seniors who are often surrounded by all their memories. It is therefore not surprising to see that according to CNN, the Duchess of Carnegie, 96, refuses to leave home.

(CNN) — Editta Sherman has celebrated more than half a century’s worth of new years in her palatial studio apartment above New York’s Carnegie Hall. But it’s unlikely the celebrated portrait photographer will be raising her glass there next year. Known as the Duchess of Carnegie, the 96-year-old came home a few days ago to find an eviction notice on her door.

“I thought, oh, what is this? Are you kidding me that they are really going to send a woman like me down the street just like that? Have me scurry away without a fight,” she said, delivering a whooping cackle, punctuated with a grandmother’s tsk tsk.

“Oh, no, that’s not what I am going to do. They’ll have to take me out of here with their bare hands.”

The city of New York is renovating the space above Carnegie Hall, where Marlon Brando once lived and where Sherman and five other renters have enjoyed rent-stabilized bliss since Frank Sinatra cut his first demo.

Sherman pays $650 a month for her studio. Since Carnegie Hall announced its facelift, 43 residents have lost their battle to stay. Carnegie Hall has offered to pay for the rent-control tenants’ relocation expenses and move them to apartments which are “equivalent or better” in the neighborhood. The Hall also is offering to pay the difference in rent to each of those tenants for the rest of their lives. … But Sherman and her like-minded neighbors are not budging.

Living 50 years in one place represents a huge bank of memories and this palatial studio appartment couldn’t be in a better location. Hopefully the Duchess of Carnegie will be able to call some place home again in the not-too distant future.

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