sold.

on seeing a late loved one's home up for sale

There’s this thing with mourning. I’ve always been an emotional person, but I wouldn’t say I wear my heart on my sleeve. Quite the opposite. I feel everything, but reveal nothing.

Grief doesn’t really play by those rules.

I’ll never forget the night of my grandfather’s funeral, the way that profound loss snuck up on me. Pure panic attack. One minute I was lying in bed in a fit of giggles with my now husband—strange, I know, but it was exactly what I’d needed—and the next I shot up as if from the force of a defibrillator; my shattered heart brought back to life, only to finally feel the suffering.

“My grandfather,” I’d managed through choked gasps.

He was the first person I lost that I felt close to. And we weren’t as close as my grandmother and I, but we had our secrets. The money he’d giddily flash when we were alone, cash he’d hoarded, leftover from lunches or coffee. The mints he stole from every restaurant he ever walked into. The Tootsie Rolls he kept crumpled up and liquefying into chocolate soup as he popped one right after the other.

All habits I carry today.

But it was my grandmother I was closest to. The years before and after my grandfather’s death only solidified that. She grew to rely on my mom and I, and it made us closer. We were the ones she’d call when she needed to vent, when the dementia made him inconsolable, when the rampages were too much, when she didn’t know what to do. I was the one she asked to write his obituary. My mom was the one who brought her wiped-down groceries during Covid and took her to all her appointments. It was the three of us, always.

When I was writing this post, I struggled with which memories to share; how to sum up our relationship. This is where I ended up.

I spent over 2,000 days at my grandparent’s house. Over 16,000 hours. It’s representative of the once a week minimum that we visited. Every week, for all thirty plus years of my life.

It doesn’t feel like a lot when I put it like that.

And yet, it truly was my whole life.

When I say I grew up inside that house, I mean it

The last year of her life was tinged with a traumatic family feud that meant my grandmother was ripped from her home and kept in isolation. I’ll never get those months back. I was robbed of a year’s worth of memories. Over 400 hours of memories.

It feels mammoth.

After she passed, I knew her house was going to be listed. But it took long enough that it started to feel like, I don’t know, maybe it just wouldn’t. Maybe it would remain a museum to my grandparents forever and ever and one day when the family members that kept her from me died off, I’d get to go back. Sit in the living room where we’d watched hundreds of hours of mindless TV, where my grandparent’s would mechanically pass a bag of Lays potato chips between them while my grandmother taunted my grandfather that she could stop at one chip. I thought maybe I’d get to sit on the hideous green couch and paint my toenails again, or maybe we’d just order a pizza and watch bad movies, like we used to.

the couch.

But alas, that’s not life. I knew I’d have a reaction to the listing. That I’d probably cry. What I didn’t expect, was the Frasier effect.

You know that episode of Frasier, where Niles is in the hospital and starts mumbling incoherently about buildings having memories? That’s how I felt as I scrolled through a barren living room, devoid of the TV with her Westerns, the clock still hanging, counting down the minutes to absolutely nothing.

How can the people who come through the open house know the ordeal that was cleaning out the front room and trying to get her to part with a pamphlet from 1985 that she hadn’t looked at in thirty years? That she chose that color yellow for the walls because it matched her personality so perfectly. That each week we went through their old belongings, I got to hear hours of untold stories, things I’d never known.

To them, it’s just an old room in need of renovation.

And the prospective buyers can’t be expected to know that if it’s between ten am and lunchtime that gram is meant to be stationed there, sitting at her computer checking her Facebook and playing computer solitaire. They won’t see fifteen year old Angela camped out in that same chair, sneaking glances at Myspace and logging on to AIM.

How could they understand the significance of the ugly green couch or that the kitchen was our happy place? That it’s where we crafted a new meal for gram to try each week, just to satisfy her endlessly curious spirit. How we made High Tea in honor of her favorite show, Downton Abbey. That the tiny raised square just to the right of the kitchen sink is where I made us tea each week. (Two splenda, save the tea bag!).

Afternoon Tea, communion, bingo, celebrating a National's win in The G's kitchen. Ice cream sundaes we made every week in the summer (and sometimes winter). Never enough kisses and cheek pinches. <3

But as I was scrolling the listing, I saw every bit of those memories.

In the empty space the table once occupied, I saw us lazily dissecting our weeks, embellishing the mundane, coaxing out the storytellers in each of us, just to get my grandmother to laugh. I saw us getting lost in fits of laughter, making up the rules to our favorite games, going through boxes and boxes of old photos.

Scattergories. Scrabble. Cranium.

I don’t know what will happen to the house. It’s not exactly a looker. But I hope someone finds the charm in it and that they know how incredibly special it is. Beyond my lifetime, that home holds over sixty years of memories I’ll never really know. It’s the house my mom grew up in, and I like knowing that some things are just for her.

I had another rogue memory as I was scanning the listing.

When I was young, I had an attachment to all our family cars, but especially Minnie Van Blue. I’ll let you guess what kind of vehicle she was.

When it was time to let her go, I sobbed. I mean, I was really attached to this thing. I probably begged my parents not to sell her. She didn’t do anything wrong! I cried. She won’t understand why we’re giving her away!

I was a sensitive child.

Anyway, the car had to go and so I settled on writing a note. I don’t remember what I said but I think it was along the lines of how much she’d meant to us and that I hoped they’d love her as much as we had. That they’d take good care of her and give her all her favorite things. Whatever that is for a mini van.

I stuffed it in the visor and hoped for the best.

That’s what I think of now, when I look at the listing photos for my grandparent’s home. I wish I could write the buyer a note. Stuff it between the stats and figures of the MLS sheet and make sure each prospective owner knows just how precious this home is.

I would show them our photos, and share miles of memories, so they understood the lifetime of love they’re stepping into.

But I can’t and so all I have is this hope that they can feel it when they push open the door. That they’ll hear the faint jingle of the bells that once occupied the doorknob for decades, and something in them will click.

That when they decide to put an offer in, it’s because they love her, just as much as we did. That they’ll spend family evenings cozied up together in the living room, and that they’ll get pizza stains on their own ugly green couch. That when the night is winding down, they’ll head to the kitchen where they’ll spend hours laughing over board games and forging new memories as they make up their own rules.

I hope they love her, just as much as we did.

And I hope, she never forgets us.