North of Grosvenor Street

In November of 2008, the inedible happened. My 96 year old grandfather passed away in his sleep. One month later I stand in his kitchen, armed with boxes and garbage bags faced with the daunting task of emptying out his personal belongings. I have been assigned to throwing away most of the items in the 1960’s linoleum kitchen. It is a cold December day and the house has no heat. The kitchen is dark and my grandmother’s cigarettes are still in the candy dish, although she has dead for three years. I can hear my mother in the living room cursing while she frantically tosses candlesticks and broken 1980’s digital alarm clocks into boxes destined for the Salvation Army. I hear a cacophonic crash, she has obviously dropped something. I wonder if the stress of clearing out the estate has finally caused her to have a nervous breakdown. After all, she has not been right for years.
My friend Byron stands next to me, obviously not interested in helping me clear out the cabinets as much as he is excited about claiming the Bone China tea sets for himself. He is oblivious to his assigned task. Earlier, he instantaneously fell in love with the house and proclaimed that it had “good bones.” He is contemplating in his head if he can afford to buy it. I tell myself that he is here more for support anyway. So far we are the only volunteer cleaners. My father refuses to step foot into the house as well as both of my uncles. I have not heard from my cousins in over two years, although their framed childhood pictures appear all over the living room, a shrine created by my late grandmother. Unsurprisingly, no pictures of my twin sister or I can be found. This explains why my grandmother never invited us over for sleepovers. She obviously liked my cousins better. “Where are your favorites now?” I ask my dead grandmother as I quickly stake out the room. Establishing that there is no loot to claim I proceed into the next room. Recently my cousin appeared on the History Channel acting as a tour guide assigned to the task of leading the overly excited show host into the forgotten world of Los Angeles’ basement speakeasies. My TVo recorded the episode. One can imagine my surprise when my estranged cousin magically appeared on my living room flat screen the following week. I ponder if he is brave enough to lead the potential house buyers into my grandfather’s basement. There is not telling what one might find down there.
I proceed back into the dark empty kitchen. I am sad, sad at the solemn realization of death and the reality of growing old alone in a cold dark house lined with Vaseline and adult diapers. I am sad that once you are gone you are gone and your belongings, those that define you, end up tossed in Salvation Army boxes or in the trash (an eerie reminder from Jimmy Steward that you really “can’t take it with you”). As I begin wrapping my grandfather’s mismatched “made in Taiwan” tea cups in newspaper (meticulously hand selected as a present for my grandmother at St. Vincent De Paul’s goodwill) I come to the haunting realization that I may be the only remaining family member drawn to this house and to my family’s past.
I can’t help wonder how we all got here. I glance up at the dry rot walls and down at the stained carpets. I am convinced that there is more to this house than what it appears. There are stories here, life experiences concealed in time, heavily weighted down by dark tormented emotions. I sense that the past longs to beak free and be realized. I know that these stories will remain long after the house’s walls are freshly painted over and hearth once again warmed by the presence of a new family. Yet, these stories are silenced by death and the awkward stillness of a cold empty house.
The only witnesses to these memories are my father and uncles but they remain terse and astute. They want nothing, no furniture, no pictures- no memories. All they want is the check when the house sells (for way under value I might add due to the 2008 Californian real estate market crash). I smirk a little at this realization. The truth in the matter is that the all the living under this roof (good or bad) has molded who all of us are today. Haunted or not, there is not way to escape this. My Father and uncles are foolish if they think they can simply escape life by avoiding it. As if it could be that simple.