Yesterday my brother and I went to visit my vacant grandmother's house. It's been empty for about nine months now. My grandfather passed away in February 2003, and my grandmother has been alone since. In that time, she cared for my two cousins until they grew up, and her sister, until she also passed away.
My grandmother was always a nurturer. She spent her life caring for my grandfather, her two boys, her grandchildren, and sick family members. Unfortunately, the time has come when she can no longer live on her own. After being diagnosed with and treated for skin cancer and a series of accidents, she now lives with my aunt and uncle, the gracious people that they are, where she will most likely stay until her time comes. Since then, all of us have taken turns visiting the house, cleaning things out, and feeding her cat until he was found another home.
While my brother and I were there yesterday, it just amazes me how surreal it still is. The quaint little Cape used to be full of knick-knacks, old-fashioned furniture and quilts, and always the smell of something delicious cooking in the oven. Now there are only remnants of boxes, old musty photo albums, dispersed chairs and furniture that will most likely be donated, dust bunnies, and some old, cheap Christmas decorations. The smell of home cooked meals and love have faded away with time and loneliness and were replaced with a stale, musty scent with just a hint of an old woman's tears.
Every sound, every smell instantly brought me back to my childhood. The sound the storm door makes when you open it, the creak of the floor boards as you step into the kitchen, the smell of the home itself that hasn't faded in thirty years. It was like just yesterday my brother and I were there on summer vacations, coloring on the porch floor, sipping ice cream floats in the backyard grass, and drawing in the driveway with sidewalk chalk. It just amazes me how fast the time goes...and how quickly the little, quaint, three-bedroom house with the little red, wooden tulips that sit in the windows have become white...faded from years on sunlight. Faded over time.
A very large part of me felt sad. I missed it. It just amazes me how fast the time goes...and how quickly the little house, that was once filled with life and family, became abandoned, lonely, and sad. We spend some much time of our childhood waiting to get older. Then when we get older and become adults, we wonder how quickly everything slipped through our fingers. It almost doesn't seem fair.
As my brother and I pawed through items...old dishes, tools, my grandmother's ceramics that we remember, and haven't moved from their homes on the wooden carved shelves in thirty years. My grandfather's tool bench in the basement sill has his handwriting on the walls, there were old, rusty, nickel keys that belonged to cars that have been gone for at least twenty years. There were old toys that were right where we left them...which seemed like just yesterday.
As we wandered in the backyard, we couldn't believe how small it seemed. When we would run out the back door and into the yard, it seemed so much bigger to us then. It seemed like we ran from miles from the back of the house all the way to the fence. The backyard used to be overflowing with flowers, plants, vegetables, and huge sunflowers that seemed tall enough to kiss the sun, and a large garden that my uncle used to care for. Walking in that garden seemed to go on forever. It was like a dense jungle that you could easily get lost in. I remember walking through that garden, holding onto my uncle's rear end pocket, afraid yet mesmerized.
Now the backyard seems empty and lonely. My grandmother's clothesline is overrun with grape vines and ivy, and are old and full of moss. It seems like a lifetime since they've seen and held clothes. All that remains is one, single maple tree. A young tree that symbolizes the birth of new life that the house would see again one day.
It was weird to think that none of us would be coming back here to live or visit again. My grandmother's days for caring for others are gone. And while the home is still filled with spirits of my grandparents, and my father and uncle, my brother and I and our cousins, it's also filled with the ghosts of what seems like lifetimes past. Regardless of where I go or where I end up, it will always and forever be my grandmother's house.
Cover image:
SUNFLOWER
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