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The time has finally come to clean out my grandmother's home in Port Neches so it can be put on the market and sold, so I'm making a trip out there to help my parents, since I'm the kid with no job (my brother and sister both have to work). Well, that disingenuous - I actually want to help out. I spent many summer days there in the cool quiet of my grandparent's ranch-style near the Port Neches River. I can fondly recall climbing out of the car on many occasions and being overcome by the heavy, hot air so typical of southeast Texas. The strange, briny smell of the river hung in the air - not pleasant, but not malodorous either - and it was often possible to look down Wood Street and see a large, rusting vessel anchored at the sleepy port. My grandparents had an enormous magnolia tree in their front yard that my brother and I would often climb together, seeing how far we could get up the tree before we scared ourselves into thinking we were too high and slinked back down.
The interior of the house was always dark but also perpetually comforting. Numerous details have been committed to memory: the deep shag carpet; the ghostly curtains that diffused the light in the unused living room; the loud mechanical noises of their ancient central air system; the front door with the knob in the middle (to this day an anomaly never explained); the numerous books on my grandparents' two icons, Tom Landry and the Kennedys; glass-and-brass end tables that still appeared untouched after 25 years; the cabinet where they kept the games.
The games are one thing that I really miss now that Granddad has passed on and Nanny is trapped in her motionless body in a rest home, the victim of two very nasty strokes. My grandparents were fanatical about games: Uno, Poker, Blackjack, Bingo, Mexican Train, just about anything in the Hoyle manual, and, of course, Old Maid. They had several sets of Old Maid cards, from an indiscernible decade, with very dated artwork on them. Always bent and pliable from years of use, they played an important factor in many nights at Nanny and Granddad's. Mexican Train will forever be etched in my memory as the last game my Granddad played the last Thanksgiving our family had together at their house, as he looked to be wasting away from his then-undiagnosed ALS and extremely tired from having to endure several bypass surgeries weeks before. Nothing ever kept that man away from a good game.
I don't think my mind has fully adjusted to the fact that a certain part of my life has ended and will never be experienced again. But I hope I will understand it someday.
It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of every man;
the living should take this to heart.
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