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The Window into Night in the House of Memory







It’s Thanksgiving weekend. I am awake at 5am in my grandparent’s house. It’s not the first time I’ve been awake in this house staring out the living room window into the night; it is the last time.





My grandparents are in their 90’s now, grandpa has the beginning stages of dementia and grandma has an advancing case of Lupus. They are going to be moving into a retirement home early next year possibly.





This is the last time I will get to stare out the window into the night in this house. I’ve been doing it consistently for the last 34 years. I remember looking out and wondering if Santa Claus had come yet. I remember looking out and wondering about the future as I was to enter my first year of college.





This house holds more memories of mine than any other. It holds the memory of a 7 year old who came here during the summer to spend time with grandma and grandpa. She went swimming, learned how to dance with grandpa, and how to play mahjong. The memories of Christmas past reside in this very living room, where I remember laying on a futon on the floor in a sleeping bag, restless and awake and waiting for the morning.





I can tell you which parts of the floor in this house creak; I used to sneak around in here as a child to get a coke from the refrigerator or candy from grandma’s candy bowl. Of the 17 steps that go to the basement, I know which ones make noise when you step in the middle.





I can remember looking out the windows of this house in fear during the summer thunderstorms. I have never really enjoyed the noise, it hurts my ears. I look out the window now and see the silhouette of the branches of the blue spruce that was planted the year my grandparents moved in... the tree is as old as me.





And as I look out the window into the darkness, I see this time that I am reaching the age where life is going to start taking things away... and the house of memories will be the first to go.