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Grandfather never spoke much. His pride in life was simplicity, the notion of having little and needing less, of stark enjoyment in the littlest of treasures. He was a quiet, indifferent man, coarse and worn as the bark of an oak, with comfort just the same. Grandfather always took great pleasure in his life, plain as it was.
Each morning, he rose with the fresh dawn and brewed a cup of tea, made with herbs from old Mrs. Clarke’s fruit and vegetable stand by the beach. He was a regular there, stopping every Sunday morning after church for eleven apples, two ears of corn, and “whatever fresh herbs you have in stock” (but always thyme. He loved thyme). Most days, he sat on the porch of the old beach house and wrote. We wanted to ask why, why he sat there all day, why he rarely left, but our mothers told us to hush up, that it was impolite. He’d sit for hours in his creaky rocking chair that Ella and Jamie said he built himself, rocking back and forth, back and forth. He never told us what he wrote, and to this, we never asked.
When he did speak, it was never without purpose. He wasn’t one we would go to with our scraped knees and mosquito bites, but he was always the one who would make them feel better. He had a way with words, stretching them out like strips of taffy, sugar sweet and sticky. They etched themselves into our minds, permanent as the scratches on the wall from where Hattie’s cat tried to escape, or the river of sand that always made its way inside (Mama hated that). Grandfather never spoke much, but when he did, we remembered.
Grandfather seemed to never age, hair as grey as my earliest memories, the same smile lines etched around his eyes, bold and prominent as if a graphite pencil had sketched them. Really, he wasn’t blood related to anyone but Marsha and Casey and Cora and Glenn. But he was a grandfather to all of us, and we couldn’t think of him as anyone else.
Cherry was the polar opposite of him. We all called her Cherry Pie, or Cher, because she loved 90s rom-coms. She was the age to have been our grandmother, but really, she wasn’t related to any of us. She had married grandfather after his first wife passed away (she always insisted that “he came onto me first!”), and they hadn't had any kids, but to us, she was as good of a grandmother as anyone.
Cherry loved to tell stories, and was excellent at it. On the stormy nights, where the sky opened up and the wind howled and the heavens came down upon us, Cherry would gather us around the old stone fireplace and talk to us, whispering tales of windswept victorian balls and red convertibles and dragons soaring above towering mountains. Her poems, her words, would capture even the littlest ones’ attention, and in the morning, as the sky turned robin’s egg blue and the only remainder of the storm was the dew on the grass, any notion of ever fearing was forgotten.
No one was ever too old for Cherry’s stories, not even the older kids, not even the grown ups. When Cherry told a story, you couldn’t help but listen.
She had a way about her that echoed a shadow of mystery, with every shared smile, there was an undertow of a life she had lived, a life where some of her stories may be true.
They complimented each other perfectly, Grandfather and Cherry. Of course, each were whole, complete people, but still, they made up each other, never one without the other. Where there was Grandfather’s content silence, there was Cherry’s wild adventures, where there was the sun, there was the sky, where there was the moon, there was the stars.
They loved the stars. Sometimes, when they thought we were sleeping, they would lay on the wooden beams of the porch, gazing up at the sky, at all of the stars. I never heard them talk on those nights, but there was always a meaning, something between them, something they had never lost. They were still kids, despite their age, still just kids in love.
There was always something different about the stars at their house, at the old beach house. They were certainly clearer, visible, but it seemed to be more. Maybe it was the way it felt, a crisp night sky after days of sun bleached towels, salty hair and sticky fingers from the tangerine popsicles that seemed to always be in the freezer. Or maybe it was purely psychological, the wide eyed children gazing at a sparkling blanket of sky, our home forever.
Until it wasn’t.
Cherry passed before Grandfather. She never seemed sick, never seemed old. Perhaps she was old, older than we thought, but old was never a way to describe Cherry Pie. It was sudden, but it wasn’t unexpected. Deep down, we all saw it coming. When I heard the news, found out she was gone, I went home. Not my house. My home.
We all had the same idea.
Despite being together again, it wasn’t the same without Cherry, without her smile and contagious laugh and jam tarts only she knew the recipe for. Grandfather wasn’t the same, his silence less comforting than melancholy, his stability gone. He never left the porch, and this time, we didn’t need our mothers to tell us why.
Those nights, the sky was cloudy.
Those nights, nobody sat outside to look at the stars.
The day her funeral came, we all dressed in our brightest colours and craziest socks, just like she said she wanted. A celebration, not a funeral. And we celebrated. Or, we tried to. We put on our smiles and told our best stories of her.
Nobody told stories like Cherry, though, and I realized the only person who should be telling stories about Cherry at her funeral, was her.
We buried her by the church where we always went for Sunday service. Mrs. Clarke brought peonies, Mr. Adams sunflowers. Timothy played guitar and Autumn sang, sweet songs, delicate and French. I brought the piece of purple sea glass we found one morning when I was up early after a storm. I still remember her laugh, still remember the feeling of bliss when she found that treasure. Feeling its chapped, weathered surface, I placed it on the ground, right underneath the sunflowers. She would have wanted those on top, they were always her favorite.
Grandfather didn’t cry. He was steady, firm. He was the old oak tree. He smiled when he saw my seaglass, when he heard the stories, ones he had probably known for years already. He smiled when they played her favorite song, the one he used to dance with her to, twirling her around the living room.
His eyes, though, his eyes were sad. Watered down. He knew his life had changed, the ardor of the past gone forever. We all knew.
That summer, we didn’t go back to the beach house. We parted, words of goodbye lingering on our lips. Sweet, like honeysuckle. Acrid, like the sea. Our sea.
That summer, there was no laughter, no late night ghost stories and barefoot adventures. No running around in towels and bathing suits, and jumping off piers, and pink sunburnt cheeks. The floors of the beach house were clean that year.
That summer, we were too old for stories.
Through it all, we grew up.
Jamie had kids, Ella ran a business. Hattie started an animal shelter, Clay got married. Marsha started college, Casey finished it, Cora left town, Glenn had a baby on the way. Timothy finished high school, Autumn finished her junior year. Spencer moved overseas, I stayed. Before we had known it, the days of our present became pure stories we reminisced on. Memories of a life lived and purely, genuinely loved. We all talked, but not often, simply a polite greeting, mere formalities to avoid the guilt of neglect.
Grandfather passed next.
I had kept in touch best I could, sent letters, visited for a day or two. He had never healed, though, you could tell. A weight had cast upon his shoulders, foggy and grey. He had stopped talking, he had stopped writing.
He stopped looking at the stars.
I think then I knew it was over, then I knew he was done. The stars, for Grandfather, were permanent, steadier than even him.
The morning I got the call, I already knew.
This funeral was harder. Nobody wore bright colours, no laughing was done. No smiling through pain, no smiling at all. He was gone, and it didn’t feel real. My life had opened, the steadiest of forces disappeared, the rocks that had forever kept me in balance were forever absent. The universe had opened, wide, empty.
We buried him next to Cherry. Not as many people came. He would have liked that, only those closest. Mrs. Clarke brought a bundle of thyme, I left a weathered rock, a pearly line drawing across an ashen surface. He always liked to collect rocks.
He’s not coming back.
I worked, I drowned myself in my thoughts, mindlessly pacing through my days. I tried looking at the stars, the sky, but it wasn’t the same. The stars were, of course, always different at the beach house. Days faded into weeks, weeks into months. Black and white, mornings of beige and evenings of grey. Stale coffee.
It was Jamie’s idea.
He saw it, he was the oldest, after all. Nothing had ever crept up on Jamie, he always had a plan. He was the steadiest of us, the one who rationed the cookies to make sure everyone got one, the one who replaced the rotten board on the dock so nobody would fall through. Jamie was like that.
He knew that, through losing two people, we had lost so, so much.
And just like that, I found myself back at the beach house. I was right. We had all grown up.
Jamie and Glenn were adults now, pure and simple. Their faces were creased with worry lines, a beard flecked the bottom of his Jamie’s chin. They were still Glenn and Jamie, though. Still the bossy teenagers.
Ella’s round face had shrunk, the plump stomach of her toddler years gone. Her brown eyes were darker now, and framed by crimson glasses, the color of the gingham rug in the living room. Her smile was the same, though, still older than all of ours. Forever the mature sister of our crew.
Hattie and Marsha and Cora had grown, no longer the babies. They were more confident, too, Hattie no longer hunched her back when she walked, Cora looked people in the eye. Marsha’s hair was combed and styled, contrary to the messy knot she used to scrape into a ponytail on hot afternoons.
Married life had aged Clay. Once the rascal, the mischievous prankster running around in nothing but swim trunks, Clay now sported a crisply pressed buttoned shirt and dress shorts. The chocolate covered face was gone, but I still saw a glint in his eyes, a shadow of summers long ago.
Each one of them had evolved, became purely the essence of themselves. What did I look like to them?
Then again, looks were never an issue with them. Looks are never an issue with family, chosen or real. To them, I was still the same, and forever would be.
We picked up where we left off, and I began to heal. The days were no longer grey with absence, they were filled with bright hues of summer green and golden orange and crisp blue. Sand coated the floors of the house, the freezer filled with tangerine popsicles once more.
Of course there were still changes, life would feel tainted without. Mrs. Clarke no longer ran the fruit stand, Mr. Adams no longer hosted the radio show. Cherry no longer danced through the halls. Grandfather no longer sat on his chair. We learned, though. That summer, we learned to heal, to grow. This was our home. It raised us as much as anyone.
Almost all of the stars came back.
We found the photos in a box beneath the couch. It was cold and blustery outside, not common for July, so we sheltered in the beach house, watching movies and drinking tea (made with herbs from the fruit and vegetable stand). Autumn found them looking for a sock, covered in dust, coughing as she came up. The box wasn’t abnormal, not suspicious. Mauve and glossy, it was labeled messily, summer. Heavy as it was, our curious souls yearned to learn more.
We opened it, and took a look at our lives.
Sepia toned polaroids and crisp coloured prints of years back, from chubby toddlers to awkward teens, all the same faces grinning at the camera. Grandfather, writing on his chair, Cherry, telling us a story on a stormy night. Timothy, holding up a fish and beaming ear to ear, Spencer jumping off a rope swing. Marsha and Cora and I, wearing too-big heels and covered in strawberry ice cream, Casey blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Grandfather and Cherry, gazing at the stars.
Salt and sea and golden afternoons and pink sunrises and sticky hands and red faces and freckled noses and constant grins and everything that had been so beautiful and still was.
Healed. Broken, and healed.
That night, we lay on the weathered beams of the porch. We heard the murmurs of the house settling down around us, whispers of our past and echoes of our future. We knew, in those boards were memories, threaded through wood grain and engraved forever.
Never much, but we remembered.
That night, we saw all of the stars.
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