Pain

I opened the closet.

The light was coming from under the floorboards.

Had I dropped something down there? Seemed unlikely, but I needed to check. Possible someone had dropped their phone, but how it would have gotten under the floorboards was a puzzle.

I fetched my hammer and flashlight.

When I lifted my head and wiped my eyes, I swore I saw a light coming from the back closet.

I frowned.

I had emptied the closet some time ago.

Perhaps I had forgotten to turn off the light.

I had taken so much to charity shops already. The house was almost empty. Almost ready for a new owner.

Hard to believe it was the same place I had spent a few weeks every summer.

There was almost nothing of my great-grandmother left.

I sat in the middle of the bedroom I had once shared with her and cried.

The rest of the family had already come and what they wished. Not that there was much.

My great-grandmother had always lived a simple existence, finding more pleasure in the lush gardens she’d kept even at her age than in the house.

She preferred nights on her porch swing watching the stars telling stories to whomever would listen.

I was really going to miss her. I wish I would have made the six hour drive out to see her more often.

She’d been close to a hundred. Maybe even had been a hundred. Birth records and such were not what they are today.

She’d been born a few miles from the home she’d eventually lived in for over eighty years.

The home she’d died in.

And the home I had come to clean out.

She would’ve been one hundred this year.

I’d talked to her the week before, and she’d been looking forward to getting a letter from the president.

So hard to believe she was gone.