Hasta Mañana

Sadness causes a tightness in my chest as I enter the building my grandparents used to call home. Boxes fill the living room, each one a casket full of lives lived, ready to be packed into the moving truck and shoved away in a dark storage container. I look to the alcove behind where the couches used to be and for a moment I see a small boy playing an old Star Wars game on a computer that is normally only used to very meticulously check church emails. The moment doesn’t last long, and the alcove returns to its bare state, the outline of the desk still fresh on the carpet. I scan the rest of the living room, the sight of the fresh outlines on the carpet leaving a hollow feeling in my gut, like each piece of furniture removed was one of my own organs taken from my body. My gaze finally rests on where his chair should be. For a moment, I’m looking at an old man, lying in his large reclining chair, sleeping soundly for the first time in weeks. Beside him, giving him a small touch on the hand, is a young man, only nineteen years old, not wanting to wake him to say goodbye because he knows sleep is a rare and precious commodity to the old man. Finally, the young man decides to let him sleep and leaves without a goodbye, knowing he will see him again in two weeks' time. I am wrenched from that moment by a sudden hand on my shoulder, and I quickly wipe my eyes before turning to see who it is.

“Hey, we’re about done packing up the boxes, could you check each of the rooms and make sure nothing big was missed?” my mother asks me, seeing my red eyes but knowing it’s best to leave me with my feelings for now. I nod my head silently, afraid a single word out of my mouth will open a floodgate. “Take your time, the movers are finishing up and we can fit anything extra in my car. Your granny is already headed to her new house with your uncle. I left a mattress in the back room for you if you don’t want to stay in the hotel tonight.” I nod again, staying the night here one last time might be nice. “It’s about a five-hour drive, so we need to leave a little bit early. I’ll come pick you up at the butt crack of dawn. Give me a hug before I go.” I smile and give my mom a hug, a very short woman but full of spit and vinegar. She turns to go, not one for long goodbyes, and leaves me alone in the husk of a house.

Now free to wander the house alone, I meander into the kitchen, where small stains leave stories here and there all across the floor. Four small marks where the legs of a dinky little table used to sit stirs another memory. A little boy, up before almost everyone else, sits in a chair pushed up to the table, the smell of fresh coffee fills the air, and a small old lady fusses over him about being up so early. It’s worth mentioning if he had slept late, she’d be fussing over him sleeping too much, it was quite the unwinnable battle, one imagines Sisyphus. Another memory stirs and the little boy is getting heckled for not liking tomatoes in a family where tomatoes run through our veins. Alas, tomatoes never stopped being gross, the rest of the family just never developed functioning taste buds. The memories fade from my sight and a faint smile lightens up my face slightly.

I move on down the hallway, on my right there’s a tiny bathroom, and further down the hallway on the right is the master bedroom, still very foreign to me even as an adult. First on the left is the fancy guest room, which I never slept in, and at the back on the left is the less fancy guest room, which I almost always slept in, except when I was exiled to the couch. I meandered into the bathroom, where a solitary toothbrush sat waiting for me. It was an old stormtrooper toothbrush that had been purchased for, and never used by, a five-year-old me. It was absolutely coming home with me. No clear memories spawned from this room, however my nose definitely remembered some smells, especially when my uncle was visiting at the same time as me. Time to escape before my nose starts having more vivid memories.

I move to the fancy guest bedroom, which transitioned in its purpose a couple times before finally becoming my uncle’s permanent bedroom while he helped out around the house. Every time I visited, which was about every other weekend while in college, I would always just barge into his room to bug him about something. I wonder if it ever annoyed him or if he was just happy to see me. It was sad not seeing the walls lined with bookshelves, or hearing him fuss over technology, no matter how simple it was to operate. I stepped back into the hallway. Looking down the hall, I felt a dark presence coming from the master bedroom, as if something sinister lurked behind the door. I forced myself to take hold of the door handle, even as my hand shook, I turned the knob and entered the room.

The room was bare, as were all the others, but this time a much more vivid memory triggered. A young man, only nineteen years old, entered the living room through the front door, hoping he wasn’t too late, his face dropping as he saw the rest of his family crying together in the living room. I watched as the young man transformed into a little boy as he laid his head in his grandmother’s lap and cried while she held him. His little voice, barely audible, eked out a few small words, “I didn’t say goodbye, I didn’t say goodbye, I didn’t say goodbye…” but the sobs choked out any more words he might’ve had to say. When he had finally calmed himself, the family asked if he wanted to see his grandpa before the hearse came, and not knowing how to say no, he agreed. Now I was in the bedroom with just the little boy and the grandpa, although the grandpa wasn’t really there. The boy reached out and touched his hand, but it was so cold, so wrong, and he pulled away and moved back up against the wall, afraid to leave him alone but equally afraid to get any closer. Minutes passed that felt like hours, and the boy remained in place, terrified of the thing that lay on the bed in front of him, the thing that he refused to believe was his grandfather. Finally, a knock on the door saved him, and he left the room as a young man again. My chest felt tight as I closed the door to the master bedroom on my way out. I’m not sure I want any more memories.

I moved into my bedroom and a single air mattress sat sadly on the floor, one pillow and a tiny blanket sitting atop it. At this point I wasn’t sure how comfortable I felt staying here alone, but I curled up on the mattress anyways. I stared at the ceiling for a time, dread filling my body as I spent my last night in the dying remnants of a happy home. I turned onto my side and saw something poking out from under the closet door. Crawling over to the closet, I reached out and took hold of the misplaced object. It was an old bolo tie that belonged to my grandfather. How it ended up in here I could never guess, but it filled me with a comfort I hadn’t felt since my granny told us she was moving out of this house.

I laid back down on my pitiful little air mattress with my new prize and felt my body relax. I thought I heard a noise at the door, so I looked up, clutching the bolo tie tight to my chest. The door was cracked open, the room furnished again, and a tall older man was standing there smiling at me. “Goodnight buddy, hasta mañana.” I was suddenly ten years old, snuggled up in my big comfy bed, winding down after a long day of hanging out with my grandfather. “Goodnight pawpaw, I love you.” I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, not checking to see if he was gone so that I could convince myself he stayed with me through the night.

In the morning, my mom arrived to help me pack the rest of the stuff away in her car. It didn’t take long to pack the rest of the stuff away, but as I was climbing into the passenger seat of her car, I realized I had forgotten something crucial. I asked my mother to wait, and I rushed back inside, bustling to the bathroom and grabbing my little stormtrooper toothbrush. As I headed back to the front door, I stopped to look at the place where his chair had been. I blinked for a moment, and his chair was there, and he was sitting there, asleep. I was worried I would wake him, I knew how hard it was for him to sleep, but this time I decided I needed to say goodbye. I approached the chair and gently took hold of his hand, squeezing enough for his eyelids to flutter. I crouched down to get to his eye level, and he turned his head to look at me. “Goodbye pawpaw, it’s time for me to go, but I’ll see you again soon, okay?” He slowly returned to consciousness and turned his head to look at me, his eyes showing the same confusion he had been tortured by for years now, and I was worried he wasn’t there like usual. I leaned in to hug him and whispered, “I love you, pawpaw, I’ll see you again soon.” When I pulled away and stood up to walk away, he grabbed my hand tighter and I looked back down at him. His eyes were so much more alive and knowing than I had seen them in years as he said, “I’m sorry that I can’t always remember things, and that I get so confused sometimes. But there is something that I will always remember,” he said clearly, not stuttering or mixing up a single word, “I love you very much.”

I stood there staring at the outline in the carpet for a couple minutes, trying to compose myself before returning to the car. I didn’t bother to wipe the tears off my face as I climbed in, and my mom didn’t ask me any questions as she started to pull out of the driveway. Looking up at the window I could’ve sworn I saw a tall older man and a little gray haired woman waving goodbye from the window. Suddenly I was a ten-year-old boy heading home from my grandparents' house, ready to read Harry Potter on the drive back home, Norah Jones playing softly over the radio, excited for the next visit. As we moved down the lane, the little house began to shrink in the distance, until it disappeared completely, and ceased to exist anywhere except in my memories.