The Simplicity of Goodbye

A little more than a week ago today, my mom and dad drove approximately 40 miles south.  It was a Sunday evening and with them they carried a garden salad.  Their ultimate destination was my grandma's house.  The event, a barbecue.

Barbecues at my grandma's house have never been uncommon.  The setting is ideal. There is a large, wrap-around patio, a well-kept lawn that slopes down to the pond which is often overgrown with cattails and reeds. Beyond this are pastures and orchards and, in the distance, a town, which is most visible at night as a cluster of glowing lights cradled in the base of the valley. When we have barbecues at my grandma's house, the evening begins in daylight, when the red-winged blackbirds are just visible balanced on the reeds in the pond, and ends in darkness, when the bullfrogs echo each other and the brightness of the stars rival the lights of town.

But this particular barbecue was different because it was the last one my mom and her brothers would enjoy on that particular patio. Six, maybe even seven, years ago, my grandma passed away, and a few months later, the house went on the market, where it has more or less remained ever since. Part of the problem comes from having owned a place for decades.  There's just no "right" person to take it over.  My mom and her brothers toyed with the idea of keeping it for themselves. One would say, "it could be a family get-a-way, a retreat." And another would answer, "yes, it is peaceful here.  And the yard... and the gardens." But inevitibly the impracticality of such an endeavor would set in: there was a lot of lawn to mow.  The drive out from town was rather long. Someone would have to come out every other day at least.

Of course, my mom also pointed out, it had never been quite the same since the bank had acquired the orchards in front of her mother's house.  Once it had, the apple trees and pear trees were uprooted and replaced by a series of cheap, vinyl-sided manufactured homes that were already fading and warping. That is why, after so many potential buyers and a change in real estate agents; after so many trips down to make sure the plants were all being watered; after cleaning and re-cleaning the garage and the barns, after dusting and painting the living room and re-carpeting the hallway.  After standing in the middle of the kitchen remembering, over and over, the smell of flour, of apple wood, of dinner cooking, of cookies baking. After all these innumerable days of memories stacking up on top of each other like old dishes, suddenly, finally, it is time to let go.

I dream about that house repeatedly.  I have dreamed about that house for years, ever since the first mention of selling it.  In dreams familiar places become so strange.  The house always looks the same on the outside, but inside the rooms become huge, almost cavernous, and ornately decorated in heavy, dark velvet curtains and furniture.  In my dreams, the bathrooms never work, and there are dead bugs on the carpet.  Perhaps it's my subconsious helping me remember that, for all those years when the house was lovely and decorated carefully and tastefully, there were a number of years when things just didn't work right.  The bathrooms did have plumbing issues.  There were giant spiders that lept out at you from the folds of towels.When grandma's dementia set in, there was dog and cat hair everywhere: on the curtains, the chairs and davenports, the sheets on the beds, the coffee mugs.

So letting go should be easy, if I bear that in mind. But it is never simple. That house is always the place my grandparents live, always where we headed on Christmas afternoon.  It is where my grandpa grew his wine grapes and where my grandma tended her roses.  It is where my sister and I hid out in a bedroom the day (one of the days) the cows in the pasture got lose and ambled through the yard. It is where my grandparents raised their children, where they grew old, and, in the end, where my grandma died. Letting go is difficult because it should be. Unlike saying goodbye, letting go signifies much more.  Goodbye is a word, a farewell, something spoken whether we are seeing someone for the last time or we know we will see them again tomorrow.  Letting go is an act of will. It is saying, this isn't mine anymore.

Of course, the trouble with these kinds of reflections are twofold. I tend to use "it" far too much to be clear, and I tend toward sentimentality, something which is so often undesireable in the world of writing, as I think I've mentioned before. Sentimentality has always had a dubious reputation.  Too often the sentimental can be cloying, overtly sweet, dwelling too much on love or pity, on babies with dimpled smiles and women with small hands and feet. But sentiment is also nostalgia, and while it certainly isn't something one should indulge in too often perhaps, I think once in while, being a bit nostalgic or sentimental has a purpose. I think everyone is allowed to feel lonesome for the past, to indulge in a bit of weepy prose even at the cost of sounding like a namby pamby. 

Today, I am a namby pamby. Well, maybe I always am, but today I am being so rather more publicly. Admittedly, I miss walking in through a certain back door into a certain kitchen and knowing exactly where the cookies are kept.  I miss that kitchen because it is where my grandfather taught me the box step and showed me that buttermilk is made for drinking (though I prefer mine in pancakes).  I miss it because it is where my grandma hammered out the meat for Swiss Steak and where she would set the breakfast table in the mornings, starting each of us off with half a grapefruit before serving us waffles or french toast or stale cereal. I will miss that house for as long as I live.

And now, it is someone else's turn.  I can hope that they won't destroy the place too much by punching out walls to expand bathrooms or closets.  I can hope that they will appreciate the house for what it is, classic mid-century/ atomic era architeture.  I want this new family to love the brick work and the slate flooring as much as I do.  I want them to love everything from the musty basement to the pocket doors to the shakes on the roof.  I want them to love it all as much as I do. But in the event that they are too myopic to appreciate what they have, I hope I never have to know.