I just realized that to my grandmother, this house is full of ghosts.
Not being able to remember anything, the sounds she hears from above, with Anh and her children on the upper floor, and the noises she hears from below, with me living in the basement with the radio going, are a quiet commotion that cannot be attributed to two octogenarians lying in their bed.
At times I am walking in and out of the living room, and perhaps she glimpses my comings and goings. She is surprised every time, and does not call out. Who does she think I am? Some phantom who stalks a path from basement to sofa then back?
The walls are covered in photos of past celebrations- birthday parties, anniversaries, and the like. There are grandchildren she cannot recognize, their pictures changing every so often as they age. All around the house there are families of strangers- happy, smiling people, all of them foreign and unknown.
Even as I sit here writing this, the door creaks open and a pair of eyes peer out of a darkened room. Before I can even raise a hand to wave the door is shut again.
Perhaps, taking this into account, it is my grandmother who is the ghost- haunting a house that does not belong to her.
5 comments:
yeah, i know i said i was going to put up more europe stuff, but that is still being worked on. and people who read this liked it so i posted it.
sort of just came to me- my grandmother as inspiration, who knew.
Still love it. I read it to my mom (it's her mom who has Alzheimer's) and she had the same reaction is me-she didn't really know what to say except that you catptured it so well.
this is beautiful. it's hard to read but in a good way...the second to last paragraph is lovely and the image of walls covered in strangers is heartbreaking.
this is my favourite of everything of yours I can remember reading.
it makes me very, very sad.
-Megan
this is haunting.
wow.
terence.
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