1632

She died in her bed, in her bedroom, in her home. My Grandma Alice left us two days before Christmas 2005. Her home recently sold.

Her humble little brick bungalow happened to be in a fashionable, sought after area of Denver. Until recently it was just another neighborhood. Now it is teeming with backhoes as quaint old homes are being torn up to add square footage. The buyer paid a lot of money for the priviledge of ripping her home to shreds. A second story will be added. The kitchen will be expanded. A garage will be built off the alley.

The massive tree in her front yard is going to be chopped down to make way for the new.

Red brick with white trim, three little bedrooms with sunny windows, a covered back porch, gardens, a long kitchen with a closet door that never quite shut—all will be rubble. Large white painted cabinets with round silver cut-out knobs reached the tall ceiling and were filled with mugs and teacups, boxes of Jello, dishes from the days she fed seven children. I never imagined how they’d be future junkyard cloggers as I washed dishes in Ivory liquid and put them away on doomed shelves. She kept potato chips in her oven, glass bottles of every color, shape, and size lined the deep windowsills throughout the living areas of her home. Three steps up to her front door, which sported a gold knocker, will be hauled away by a truck. A mail slot received cards and letters from near and far—she had a huge family and a very wide circle of friends. A little red shed built by my deceased uncle stands out back. A push mower and potting soil, clippers and flower pots were the occupants.

She invited me for Easter once, when I was a student at nearby CU-Boulder. I arrived in my dress and heels, only to be asked to mow her lawn with the push mower. I did it. I thought it was funny, odd, so her. That patch of grass will be dug up to make room for a room where a stranger will sleep.

We drove to her house a few Saturdays ago so I could take pictures of her house. I wanted to remember it the way it looked when I was a newborn, a baby, a child, a teenager, a lawn-mowing college girl, a young married woman, a mother. I wanted to touch the bark of the tree and measure the circumference of the trunk.

After snapping a few pictures, I approached the house and looked over the bricks and glass. The window of the room where she died had a white curtain drawn and I considered her last days surrounded by lavender walls. My attention turned back to the tree outside the window. I intended to take a measuring tape, but forgot. My husband got a roll of paper towels out of the minivan and we wound it once around the tree, marking the length with a pen. We would measure the paper towels at home.

While we were outside the house, two neighbors watched us and talked with each other. The paper towels were their threshold. One of the men said “I have to ask. What are you doing?”

I explained it was my grandma’s house, recently sold. I was there to take pictures and measure the tree because it would be torn down soon, becoming unrecognizable, “It’s going to be yuppitized,” I said.

“It’s inevitable. It will happen to all the houses on this block,” he replied.

I was sure this was great news to him—his home’s value rose on the heels of my grandma’s death. All I could think about was how angry and sad I was that years of work, play, laughter, and tears housed inside were going to become dust in the name of money. As we drove away, I cried.

Weeks later, I find myself calmer as I consider the situation. What did I expect? For her house to stand as-is for 10,000 years, memories of a back porch dinner with macaroni salad eaten on a June night in 1987 rippling on and on forever, lilting around the backyard in phantom form? Did I expect a 90-year-old woman, bearing a striking resemblance to the previous occupant to move in and invite me over for really strong coffee and homemade cookies? She is gone, so is her house. It will be torn down and replaced by a new house, with a new owner.

But it will still be #1632 on a Denver street. Life can change dramatically in the blink of an eye. We might like to entertain the delusion our life can’t be ours when bad things happen. But it is. The outer structure, the frame, the floors may change. To the pizza delivery driver and the fire department, it doesn’t matter. It is all still #1632.

I am reminded of the C.S. Lewis quote from Mere Christianity, often repeated but never diminished in it’s power and truth. I have quoted it in the past.

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building up a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.

I wish the new occupants of 1632 all the best when the house is done. I know it will be lovely when completed.

The tree was 14 feet in circumference, measured at hugging level.