permanent address 001
I looked up my grandmother’s home. what it looks like now. she died in 2020. home was sold a year or two later. she lived there all my life, all my mother’s life.
it was my second home. it was my permanent address. my mailing address. those are two different things.
a permanent address is where you physically live, currently. a mailing address is where you receive mail. they can be different. another residence, a P.O. Box, even an office.
I haven’t seen it since the home was sold. all we had to do was as drive by it and the tears came, because I knew something was lost forever. something that was always there, always mine, now someone else’s. and they’d never know her, never know what those walls would say if they could talk. never know the pictures in my head, my memories. ours.
“1.5 family home… totally remodeled.”
stream of consciousness
they removed the bushes of pink flowers. there was a bush of dark green leaves and pink flowers, but I don’t remember the type of flower. closest is peonies, but they were not. big petals, almost exaggerated, heavy. some were just buds, others were perfect if you caught them just right, others browning at the edges, others being consumed by brown, and always petals on the ground, plopped, where they would stay.
there was a wind chime. the front door is hiding the mail slot. my grandfather died on this porch. it was his final resting place, until the hospital, the morgue, the grave.
one evening, mom came over to pick me up after school. I was outside on the front lawn. I was just standing there. staring into space. he saw me standing there. he was in his usual seat, a plastic chair faded from the sun, from years of being his chair. he had a little green frisbee. he asked if I wanted to play. I said “no.”
I just kept standing there. he just kept sitting there.
mom came out, said it was time to go home. to the house on circle drive, with dad. our actual temporary permanent address. the one my mom still talks about. “I should have bought that house, the owner was going to give me a good deal. tell your dad to buy his own house.” but she didn’t, and we moved to the bigger house, more modern, on Sherman street. dad was a mailman and saw it was for sale. “no more renting — a house.” circle drive was a house, too, but it was rented.
before, we lived in a tiny apartment. dad use to take me outside on the back porch for fresh air and exercise as a baby, a toddler. he’d move me and make me dance. I guess, according to the story, he’d sing
I feel good
I knew that I would
so good
so good
now that I got you
da da da da daaaaaaaaa
James Brown.
but my mom said “she needs a backyard to play in.”
the piece of paper with the prayer she wrote is still in the family Bible we have. it’s in the living room now, where we live now. I look at it sometimes, and think, wow. a little paper lasted all these years. almost as long as me. “a house with a back yard for her to play in…” evidence she was thinking about me, what would be good for me, something better. a home, not an apartment. an answered prayer. “wow, it came true.”
we made the short drive home to circle drive. we were home from grandma’s house. mom I think ordered some Wendy’s, and there were white bags on the kitchen counter. dinner.
I sat down on the couch next to my dad. he was watching a game, I think basketball. I just sat and watched what he was watching, quietly ate my Wendy’s. probably a burger and fries, maybe the nuggets.
the phone rang. commotion. from the kitchen. my mom hung up, stood in the threshold between the kitchen and living room. “that was my mom. she found my dad on the porch. slumped over. I gotta get over there.”
I asked to go. she said no. she hit into the car and drove off.
dad didn’t say anything, just kept watching TV. I didn’t say anything.
a few minutes later, he looked at me.
“are you scared?”
I don’t remember answering. probably nodded, or said “yeah.”
he didn’t say anything. he turned his head back to the TV. it was on a raised white platform built until the white wall. a big black square when it was off.
I was 9. in my head I wondered — I wonder what was in his head. I know he didn’t know what to say. but I knew he knew he should say something, something comforting, but I knew he didn’t know what to say about that kind of thing. emotions, feelings. difficult feelings. I knew he didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t blame him. but I remember wondering — I wonder how long before he said something that he was thinking, “I should say something. what do I say?”
my grandfather was already dead. dead on arrival. not on arrival to the hospital—on the arrival of paramedics. they put him on a stretcher and wheeled him to the ambulance. my grandma said, he needs his heart medicine. let me run inside and get it.
“m’am, he’s gone. he has no pulse.”
they took him away. mom walked with grandma back through the door. it wasn’t red. there was a black rod iron screen door, heavy and the lock was tricky. the other door was brown, wooden, with a busted lock that had to be opened a certain way from the inside, usually my grandma would open the door. we had the key but it was a pain to get it open, so mom would park the car in the drive way and say “go ring the doorbell.” and a curtain would open or a voice on the other side, “that you?” it’s me.
they went inside, huddled together on the couch. cried until they tired themselves out.
my grandpa died relatively young. my grandmother died very, very old.
my mom said she kept saying, “Johnny, you left me here. you were supposed to stop smoking. why couldn’t you stop smoking for me?”
my grandfather had heart disease, and promised her he had stopped smoking. the paramedics had found a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket when they ripped open his shirt to use a defibrillator.
while all this was happening, I was on the couch watching basketball.
I don’t remember much after that. I don’t remember mom coming home, or when. I don’t remember her telling me he was gone.
what I do remember, still, and always have:
I remember thinking, he must have died just a few minutes after we left. the car ride was just a few streets down, and the call had come amidst as soon as we got back in the house.
“I wonder if the last thing he saw, the last thing he heard, was me telling him I didn’t wave to play frisbee. telling him no.”
but it’s not that I didn’t want to play. I just knew about his heart, and worried he’d get sick if he got up off his chair. I thought he should just stay sitting down.
I’d think, maybe I was the last thing he saw, the last thing he heard — no, I don’t want to play with you.
then I think, I could have had to watch my grandfather die.
