Goodbye, Farewell, & Amen

This weekend, I said goodbye to Grandma’s house.

If my life were a TV show, my grandma’s house would be one of the permanent sets. I once wrote a description of the place for a school project, completely from memory, down to the worn paint on the creaky stairs connecting the kitchen to the basement.

That basement – that drafty basement that still had Eisenhower-era concrete steps leading to the backyard – hosted twenty years’ worth of family Christmas Eve dinners. All fifteen cousins squeezed onto the same two benches at a long table until the oldest ones were bringing their wives along. Only hustlers who claimed the seats near the kitchen ever got a sip of soda – that is, hustlers and me, because I was the baby and my fourth-youngest cousin would hustle on my behalf. I had to go into that basement last December to try to find a tripped breaker in the fuse box, and I found a fire extinguisher that expired during the Reagan administration. I wasn’t surprised - it was that kind of basement.

That kitchen – that tiny linoleum kitchen –had enough pasta sauce made in it to last your whole lifetime. Indeed, it had lasted my whole lifetime, so far. Not to mention the meatballs, the ziti, the penne, and spaghetti that went with the sauce, or the bread that soaked up the last drops. That kitchen was where we rolled out hundreds of Easter cookies every year on Holy Thursday, when I’d leave school after a half day just to help her with it, and made ricotta pie for Palm Sunday every year. If you were a good kid and ate your meat, there’d be a treat: an ice cream cup from a seemingly-endless supply in the freezer. We finished the last of the ice cream just after she died, while we waited for the undertakers to come.

We always ate at the dining room table, a lovely piece that was forever covered plastic-coated tablecloths. When we were all seated, Grandma chanted, “is everybody happy?” and we shouted back “Yesiree!” in cadence. The walls were hung with cool things to look at: a reproduction of The Last Supper, a group picture of Grandma with her children and grandchildren, crucifixes, Lord’s Prayers in various languages. Later on there was a white board that we used to remind Grandma what day it was and which descendant’s birthday was coming up.

All the descendants knew this house, and there were many of us: Grandma lived to see 36, counting children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The vast network of in-laws and grandnieces and great-grandnephews made for quite a massive family tree. Even when Grandma had forgotten that this was her house, she always knew her descendants – or at least, she’d pretend to while she played with the young’uns, making up lyrics to songs she’d forgotten. For three decades, descendants ran up and down the staircases of this house, pretending the attic was a restaurant and the front yard was a zoo. (The big tree was for monkeys to climb; the porch mail slot was for feeding the lion.) Only 6 months ago we celebrated her 94^th birthday in the backyard, 45 people in attendance, and Grandma said, “I don’t think this is the majority of my family.” She used to have lots of things to say about her ever-growing brood: “I was never the star of the show, but I was a great producer.” “I want my cut from the phone company.” “What hath God wrought?”

This was not the house in which Grandma raised her children. Rather, it was the house in which she taught her grandchildren: how to cook, how to say evening prayers, how to pretend to faint on stage, how to clip coupons. It was the house where kids would sleep upstairs when parents were gone overnight (sometimes they were at the hospital having the next kid!) It was the house where you could “show Grandma what you’re learning in piano class” – show her on this ancient instrument where 30 or more people have taken lessons. Grandma could still play a little, at the end. And, it was the house where Grandma died last December, breathing her last while listening to Christmas carols from her hospice bed.

This was the house to which I went last Saturday. I’ve heard that some cultures burn everything that belonged to the dead person. In America, we sort through it all instead.

Sorting through the home of a deceased person is like being an archaeologist. You have to figure out what’s fragile (almost everything), what’s valuable (define value), and what can be discarded (start with that TV purchased in 1955). Yet you also find yourself trying to reconstruct what things are and why they were preserved the way they were. Like these three pages of a typed speech with no title, at the bottom of a desk pile full of religious literature: that’s Grandma’s copy of my valedictorian speech from 2009. Or this wallet booklet with quarters in it: apparently, when the booklet was full you would have enough to buy a war bond, but the war ended with $1.25 still in there and Grandma never got around to spending it. Or that newspaper clipping: on the other side you’ll find great-grandpa’s obituary.

By the time Sister and I arrived in a rented SUV, many things were already gone and yet there were infinite piles still to sort through. There were so many practical questions to be solved: will this desk fit in that Jeep, should we keep this map where pins mark the house of each descendant, how can we get the bedframe down the stairs? Sister and I had really only come to say goodbye and to pick up the TV, yet we went back to Brooklyn with many odds and ends. Framed baby pictures of ourselves. A letter opener/envelope sealer set. The map. My speech. An ancient bobbin, still wound with bright red thread, which fell out of the Singer sewing machine when it fell to pieces during the trip to the curb. And, of course, almost thirty years of memories.

We obeyed a series of instructions: Hold open that door. Wrap these lamps in blankets. Take the knitting needles home for yourself. Claire, sit down, don’t lift things that heavy!

Say goodbye to everything you’re going to miss. We’re going to miss everything. All the ancient toys that smelled a little bit like mothballs and the well-loved picture books and the faded palm crosses by the fireplace. The laughter and the prayers. The story of our family and our lives. But it’s not our house anymore, and our story is moving.

The new owner was there, showing renovation plans to his contractors. He helped me move a bench out of the backyard, and I said that it was the bench where Grandma would sit to keep an eye on grandsons playing at the basketball hoop that used to be down by the property line. “Oh!” he said, “That’s why there’s a little square of macadam back there!” Yup, that’s why there’s inexplicably placed macadam; it was left over from when this house was in our story.

Sister and I took one last picture of ourselves climbing the monkey tree in the front yard, and said goodbye. Goodbye, house, we’ll miss you. Best wishes to the next family that fills up this home. Goodbye, Grandma, we’ll love you forever. Thank you for everything.