*requiem*


I had no idea, when I left Grandma's house back then, that I was seeing it for the last time. 

When we returned a year later, there was still the single tree in the small front yard, the low but impenetrable hedge growing alongside the cracked driveway, the blue and white garage; nothing that would indicate to an ordinary passerby that this house was any different from all the other generic suburban houses in that generic suburban neighborhood.  But these mundane features had always appeared to us as a face: the warm, familiar face of Grandma's house.  Except that it wasn't Grandma's house anymore. 

The doorbell still sounded the same when I rang it, but the door itself had been changed; it was white, newly painted, and lacked the yellow glass window the old door had.  There was no furniture inside, no curtains on the windows; gone were the dusty green and brown sofa, the clunky old Zenith TV, and the tan easy chair my brother and I used to fight over.  The carpet was also white and brand new, to replace the faded sea green one.  The refrigerator that used to be covered with magnets, family photos, and newspaper cartoons now stared at us coldly with its blank beige face.  I turned on the faucet in the bathroom, and remembered when that same countertop had been littered with our toothbrushes and toiletries, along with the nightlight and the useless paper cup dispenser. 

Walking through the place was like being at a wake, gazing into a coffin at the body of someone I knew.  I could recognize the shape, the general placement of the features... but what I loved about the house was gone, never to return. 

 ~Andrea L. Peterson 1998 
andrael@skyinet.net