You can't sell memories

If the walls of my grandmother’s house could talk, they would laugh. Not a hilarious laugh, but a cheerfully happy, I’m-so terribly-glad-to- see-you chuckle, the sound that accompanied my Grandma Marilyn’s hugs.  I idealized my childhood days spent at Grandma’s house but the residence itself is entirely unremarkable. It’s a 1970’s split-level near the end of a boring street, at the end of an aging neighborhood. It is not pretty, but it represents the extraordinary nature of my grandma, and our endearing, and enduring, relationship.  This month her house is being sold.   

Once you die, there are a finite number of remnants you’ll leave behind.  These tokens get boxed-up, used-up, and sadly, the longer you’re gone the more your presence dwindles. I feel like by selling Grandma’s house I am saying good-bye to one of the last and best artifacts of my Grandmother.  

The house has been my sister’s home since Grandma passed.  She’s recently purchased a new place on a hill with a view, one that fits her family much better.  They have been perfect stewards, but it has been a sacrifice for her to be there. It would have been hard to be my sister, forging her own memories and paying rent in a space so long inhabited by Grandma. It would’ve been emotionally taxing, but she’s done it and I feel grateful.  Her blonde-haired, blue-eyed twin girls swung in the back yard, her doctor husband parked his new car in the garage, my sister’s outpouring of talent showed in the home’s deliberately crafted décor.  This summer I mistakenly feared that when I came back to Grandma’s house after her death I would immediately feel grief. But instead, upon my arrival I was showered with hugs and food. It was just the way Grandma would’ve met me at the door.

Grandma’s love for my siblings and me was both irrational and effusive. She had darkly- tinted, rose-colored glasses for us. I’ve spent time imagining myself in various states of plunging ‘off the deep end’ but honestly, I can’t fabricate anything that probably would have stopped her love.  

Grandma spoiled us rotten.  Her house was a perfect combination of genuine love mixed with a taste of hedonism.  It was like Brazil’s Carnival but for kids.  We OD’d on hot cinnamon rolls and soaked up her doting, praising admiration.  My grandma always had a crystal candy jar perched at the top of the stairs full of red and green M&Ms or wrapped chocolate eggs-- she refilled it as many times as we wanted. We’d saturate ourselves in Nickelodeon and get 7-11 Slurpees which were consumed way past our bedtime.  My cousin Krystal lived just a 3-house-stroll down the alley and we played relentlessly. The longer we played the more creative, complex our play became.  The set-up at my grandma’s house was ideal.  Once my sister and I went on vacation to Hawaii and as a consolation prize, my dad took my brothers to Fairbanks and called it “Boys' Hawaii.” Since Grandma’s house was so vacation-like, they bought it like suckers. Many of life’s best hours were consumed there.

It’s inevitable that Grandma’s home would eventually trade hands, but it makes me sad to think that soon I will not have access to a space that has been made sacred. I will cry the day I drive up to her house and I won’t know the code to the garage door.

It bothers me to think of faceless strangers moving their lives into her spot. I abate my worries by trying to imagine the supplanting family as idyllic and loving. I try and imagine that an attractive young couple will buy the place, one with a mother that gives her babies lots of kisses.  Or would it be too much to ask to get another grandma in there, one that always smells great and bakes gourmet cookies? Whoever it is, I hope the new family can feel the soul of Grandma’s well-loved home. I hope good feelings still saturate the air.  

 I hope the new family spends cool summer evenings out on the back porch drinking Crystal Light and listening to the late-night trains.  I hope that on Christmas Eve kids snuggle up in blankets downstairs listening for reindeer to land on the roof.  I hope that they whack down the spruce tree in the front yard and put down lush green sod, the kind of lawn Grandma always wanted.  

Grandma’s house is brimming with memories. When it comes down to it, her house can be bought, but my memories cannot.  I will keep them with me and they will continue to take shape, they will be cataloged and referenced. They are moments that will always hold value long after her home has sold.

-My lovely niece Liz, playing in front of Grandma's house