“Why are you hoovering the apartment? I’ve done it yesterday.”
“But needs redoing.”
After doing the kitchen which truly needs it, I rush through the done and dusted bedroom to open the front door and decide that our doormat with a writing Welcome doesn’t need any attention…but the neighbour’s one with My favourite place written on it — does…
In the past, I would never venture that far. I would notice it as different items were stored on it occasionally — dog items or periodically the whole wardrobe of ex-lovers, who needed to discover that they have been categorised into the past while trying to fit the old key to the new lock. It’s been exactly two weeks since I entered her private place for the first time. We had lunch with my friend in the kitchen when we heard strange noises. At first, we thought that it was her dog but after a while, we discovered that someone was shouting “help me”.
So, after two weeks, she is at the hospital, paralysed, and the dog that was ready to eat us up in one gulp before we phoned an ambulance that time, is being taken for walks by various people.
A week before saving the neighbour, we visited an old friend of mine. She is also a grandma, like my neighbour, but more than twice as old — 99 years — to be precise. I interview her. She tells me how she still remembers how her husband passed away in a bathtub and how she nearly died out of sorrow. Before she told me that I asked her what “Love” means to her to hear: “Everything, everything… It keeps me going, it keeps me living.” And she reminds me of how we used to live in one large Victorian house. Many memories return.
31st of December. The calendar year is ending, so is the life of my grandma. She pushes it till the first — ironically marking the beginning of the year with her exit and with no need to return her January pension paid before Christmas.
Four days later, I came to her house and a flood of memories gets magnified.
The day after her funeral we visit the house to the right from hers. We stand around her neighbour, who is in bed. She is also a family, one of the many grandmas that I adopted throughout the years. Each of my siblings reminds her of the best memories we made here. One of the strongest I hold is when she is mopping the floor, and I stand by her side. She converses with me all the way through. That’s why we were always coming to her house: we were the kids who never got ignored. She peeled potatoes — we were by her side, uncle was repairing his motorbike — we were turning around. She was preparing the authentic baked nuts with filling — we were definitely accompanying her until they were ready!
And there was a house to the left. Not only every holiday my friend was awaiting us, but we were marching through our grandma’s garden to get to another grandma — my friend’s. We were coming to her cool garage kitchen where she was cooking rhubarb compote and telling us some ordinary stuff, which in her warm and inviting voice sounded like a magical story.
We get to see my friend. We tell the old stories, accompanied by the next generation of listeners — one of which is named after me…
