My 86 year old Grandma, Frances, is about to move out of her home of the last 53 years, during the hottest week of the summer, and she has emphysema. Oy! It's a good move for her as she'll be headed into an assisted living facility on her own terms, where she can have the levels of care she needs now and in the future, whatever that may hold. She is nervous and excited at once but seems overall to be in good spirits.
I am the one who is having trouble with her moving. I can't stop thinking about what it means to leave your home of 53 years. This is the home where she raised her five daughters, where she travelled through time from a young bride to an old woman, where she said goodbye to her husband as his mind was lost to Alzheimer's, and where she has now watched her great grandson play in the same yard where her own babies once toddled. This is the house my grandfather, Hans, designed and built using stone, brick, and other materials found locally, but with design elements borrowed from Frank Lloyd Wright and desert Native Americans. This is the house where both of them created works of art; my grandmother made pottery, weaved, and was a talented quilter, knitter, and embroiderer, and my grandfather was a sculptor and an innovator in general (he built a catamaran, and he started a ski center). Although Grandma claims she's not a sentimental type, I keep wondering how it feels to sift through a lifetime of seemingly insignificant objects in an effort to choose which ones to keep, which ones to give away to a special family member, and which ones to discard. She has a story for every single thing in that house, and she can tell you with amazing accuracy who gave her what, with details including where that person was working at that time, and what his/her children and grandchildren are doing today. She has a brain like a card catalogue; it lists the ways in which each person is connected to the next, a huge web of the people she has known and the life she has led.
What will I miss? I'll miss bounding up the steps to the front terrace, seeing her head of pure white hair through the picture windows of the kitchen, and calling out to her (Hi Gram!) so as not to startle her when I swing open the door. She always looks up quickly to see who has come calling, and her wide, bright grin upon seeing me has always made my heart sing with the knowledge that I am someone special to her. I'll miss sitting on the high marble hearth of the grand stone fireplace in front of a crackling fire, as Brendan and I often did when we lived there for six months while waiting for our own home to be built. I'll miss days spent by the swimming pool, practicing backward dives and swimming laps. Harrison will miss this pool, too, as it has become his most favorite hangout of late. I'll miss walking through the living room and seeing my grandfather's sculptures on display, and my great uncle's watercolour paintings on the walls. I'll miss the garage, which is not really a garage but more of a cool summertime hangout, complete with a built-in couch and stone barbecue. I'll miss driving through the stone gateposts, which lend the property a sense of grandeur and serve to separate the house form the street and offer one more layer of privacy in addition to the mature birch and oak trees that line the driveway and front yard. I'll miss stepping into the cool basement where my grandfather's woodworking shop was, and where after 13 years of him being gone his suspenders still hang on a nail next to his workbench. And if you look very closely, you can make out the shape of his old leather shoes beneath a barstool, where they rest under a layer of sawdust and woodchips. I'll miss it all, you see, because I love that house, that home. I love the people who lived within those walls, and the woman who still does live there, for tonight at least.
Tomorrow we'll move Grandma to her new apartment, where she'll turn a new page in her life, where she will undoubtedly make many new friends, and where (hopefully) she will live happily and contentedly for as long as Mother Nature allows. Her house will be packed up, refreshed with coats of new paint, and put on the real estate market within a couple of weeks. And hopefully (please cross your fingers and toes) someone will look past the repairs it needs and the quirkiness of it all to embrace the spirit and design of the house. Hopefully, someone will love it just as much, if not more, than we all do, and will become someone else's beloved family home. Nothing would please me more than seeing children playing beneath those old trees, and shouts of laughter coming from the pool.
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