This Old House
It's funny the things we get attached to...
I guess that requires some explanation on my part. My grandmother this week closed on the selling of her house and farm. I knew the move was coming. No one has lived in the old place since last November. My grandmother had gotten to the shape that the family didn't feel comfortable with her living alone so far out in the country anymore and I was engaged and would be moving out soon myself. So my grandmother bought a little house in town and began the process of selling the farm.
The farm that I'd lived at for the last 13 years. The farm that I'd visited on a regular basis since birth. Actually, the home my mom and dad brought me back to after I was born.
I'd never meant to make it my home for 13 years. I moved there out of high school because it offered free rent and was close to my college. I always assumed when I graduated, I'd move on. But then my grandfather got the first of his 4 bouts of cancer. Suddenly radiation, chemo, and sickness were as much a part of my life as books and teachers. My grandmother doesn't drive so having someone else in the home to do doctor's trips, grocery runs, etc. made my staying necessary.
A few years later, when it looked like my granddad had beaten back cancer one more time, I looked into moving again. But I didn't, and then my granddad took another turn for the worse. This time it was dementia (which we later discovered, too late, was also cancer. Of the brain this time) and I couldn't bring myself to leave.
So I waited and, as expected, the cancer finally took my grandfather and with it any thoughts of moving away. My grandmother has always had someone there and, as mentioned before, couldn't drive. So again I stayed on, trying to allow my grandmother to live out her last days in the house that her husband had built 50 years before.
But it wasn't meant to happen. I had obligations and, surprisingly to a lifelong confirmed bachelor like myself, a relationship that looked a lot like it was going to end up being a marriage. I couldn't stay there with her anymore and her being alone in that old house 10 miles from the nearest hospital kept me up nights. It kept her up nights too and so we began the unthinkable. Moving my grandmother into town where she would have neighbors to keep an eye on her, easier access to emergency services, and more ability for family to stop in while passing through town.
She took it pretty well. Better than I expected actually. Better than me...
A couple of months ago, my fiance and I went out to load the last few boxes of things from my room and I felt a pang then. Nothing major, just a little twinge of regret for something that will never be again.
But planning a wedding and a honeymoon, getting my grandmother settled and making her as happy as possible, and trying to unpack myself into not only a new house but a new city (and a new person to share it all with) made me forget that pang.
Until this week, when my grandmother called me and told me the sale had closed. My uncle, through a power of attorney, had signed the papers that day. I guess my grandmother couldn't bring herself to do it.
Someone else owned my grandfather's farm. Someone else owned my grandmother's house. Someone else was going to sleep in the bedroom that had been my sanctuary, where I studied long nights in college, where I wrote all my columns, where I buried myself as a small child when I wanted to write stories about Godzilla or heroic dogs (I was a Jack London nut as a kid) or detective stories where myself and my friends solved mysteries like the Hardy Boys or the Three Investigators. Someone else was going to cook their dinner in the kitchen that my grandmother fed my mother in, and myself after. Someone else was going to spend Christmas in the house where most of my good Christmas memories lived. Someone else's name was on the deed of the land that my grandfather had bought for $25,000 over 50 years ago. Someone else. Someone I didn't even know...
That wasn't a twinge.... That was a snap.
So yeah, it's funny what you remember. I could tell you stories about my adventures with my grandfather trying to rid our garden of a particularly persistent terrapin, stories about my grandmother's fried chicken and how people came from all over the community to get it, stories about a million characters in a million tales all acted out by a kid in his grandparents' front yard. I could tell you about all that, but the truth is, none of that causes the snap.
It's that damned house...
Somehow, a bunch of brick, mortar, and wood has come to be the omnibus symbol for all those things. The umbrella under which all those things reside.
The umbrella that is no longer here.
I've heard a million country songs about people getting their hearts broken over alcohol, cheating, dogs, and women. But no one ever writes about getting his heart snapped in two by a house.
Until now...
-Gryph
"Ain't gonna need this house no longer
Ain't gonna need this house no more
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to sweep the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Or to mend no window panes
Ain't gonna need this house no longer
I'm getting ready to meet the saints."
-Traditional Spiritual
NP: Brian Setzer Orchestra "Rock This Town"
I guess that requires some explanation on my part. My grandmother this week closed on the selling of her house and farm. I knew the move was coming. No one has lived in the old place since last November. My grandmother had gotten to the shape that the family didn't feel comfortable with her living alone so far out in the country anymore and I was engaged and would be moving out soon myself. So my grandmother bought a little house in town and began the process of selling the farm.
The farm that I'd lived at for the last 13 years. The farm that I'd visited on a regular basis since birth. Actually, the home my mom and dad brought me back to after I was born.
I'd never meant to make it my home for 13 years. I moved there out of high school because it offered free rent and was close to my college. I always assumed when I graduated, I'd move on. But then my grandfather got the first of his 4 bouts of cancer. Suddenly radiation, chemo, and sickness were as much a part of my life as books and teachers. My grandmother doesn't drive so having someone else in the home to do doctor's trips, grocery runs, etc. made my staying necessary.
A few years later, when it looked like my granddad had beaten back cancer one more time, I looked into moving again. But I didn't, and then my granddad took another turn for the worse. This time it was dementia (which we later discovered, too late, was also cancer. Of the brain this time) and I couldn't bring myself to leave.
So I waited and, as expected, the cancer finally took my grandfather and with it any thoughts of moving away. My grandmother has always had someone there and, as mentioned before, couldn't drive. So again I stayed on, trying to allow my grandmother to live out her last days in the house that her husband had built 50 years before.
But it wasn't meant to happen. I had obligations and, surprisingly to a lifelong confirmed bachelor like myself, a relationship that looked a lot like it was going to end up being a marriage. I couldn't stay there with her anymore and her being alone in that old house 10 miles from the nearest hospital kept me up nights. It kept her up nights too and so we began the unthinkable. Moving my grandmother into town where she would have neighbors to keep an eye on her, easier access to emergency services, and more ability for family to stop in while passing through town.
She took it pretty well. Better than I expected actually. Better than me...
A couple of months ago, my fiance and I went out to load the last few boxes of things from my room and I felt a pang then. Nothing major, just a little twinge of regret for something that will never be again.
But planning a wedding and a honeymoon, getting my grandmother settled and making her as happy as possible, and trying to unpack myself into not only a new house but a new city (and a new person to share it all with) made me forget that pang.
Until this week, when my grandmother called me and told me the sale had closed. My uncle, through a power of attorney, had signed the papers that day. I guess my grandmother couldn't bring herself to do it.
Someone else owned my grandfather's farm. Someone else owned my grandmother's house. Someone else was going to sleep in the bedroom that had been my sanctuary, where I studied long nights in college, where I wrote all my columns, where I buried myself as a small child when I wanted to write stories about Godzilla or heroic dogs (I was a Jack London nut as a kid) or detective stories where myself and my friends solved mysteries like the Hardy Boys or the Three Investigators. Someone else was going to cook their dinner in the kitchen that my grandmother fed my mother in, and myself after. Someone else was going to spend Christmas in the house where most of my good Christmas memories lived. Someone else's name was on the deed of the land that my grandfather had bought for $25,000 over 50 years ago. Someone else. Someone I didn't even know...
That wasn't a twinge.... That was a snap.
So yeah, it's funny what you remember. I could tell you stories about my adventures with my grandfather trying to rid our garden of a particularly persistent terrapin, stories about my grandmother's fried chicken and how people came from all over the community to get it, stories about a million characters in a million tales all acted out by a kid in his grandparents' front yard. I could tell you about all that, but the truth is, none of that causes the snap.
It's that damned house...
Somehow, a bunch of brick, mortar, and wood has come to be the omnibus symbol for all those things. The umbrella under which all those things reside.
The umbrella that is no longer here.
I've heard a million country songs about people getting their hearts broken over alcohol, cheating, dogs, and women. But no one ever writes about getting his heart snapped in two by a house.
Until now...
-Gryph
"Ain't gonna need this house no longer
Ain't gonna need this house no more
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to sweep the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Or to mend no window panes
Ain't gonna need this house no longer
I'm getting ready to meet the saints."
-Traditional Spiritual
NP: Brian Setzer Orchestra "Rock This Town"
posted by Gryphon at 9:06 PM
4 Comments:
*hugs Gryph*
God gives us memory so we may have roses in December.
Funny... I had the same reaction when my grandmother (Busha) sold the house my grandfather built to move to Tennessee after his death. I was reprimanded at the time for seeming to care more about the house than about my grandfather's passing.... Yeah, I get it. And it fades.
Okay, young Gryphon, it is time to move on- no pun intended. Post, please. Your biggest LAN fan.
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