Sometimes, when you leave home for a while you come back to things feeling different.
A week and you may find lots of mail.
A month and your neighbors have started using your driveway for trash can storage
A year and people wonder when your house was abandoned
Ten years and your neighbors are probably gone
A century and your house is probably demolished, and a happy cybernetic family has moved in atop its remains.
Two centuries and people would ask why you are using "classic English"
A millennium and you may find you no longer recognize what those things in the sky are, and why the floor keeps glowing for no reason
A million years and you may find your species had to abandon its home-world
A couple million years, and you would find yourself in the situation I ended up in.