Memoir of a Little Yellow House

I can't remember a time before Sharon. Her little yellow house was a bright patch of light, and she shone like the sun. Her yard burst at the brim with flowers cascading from front to back. My fingers would brush over the Russian sage, nose filled with the satin scent. Her home brimmed with the fragile porcelain of trinkets and moments of memory. Ridged glass bowls always perched on dainty tables, waiting for the small hand of a child to pluck out a candy. “Grandma Sharon” adopted the neighborhood. Her big, booming voice could saturate a room. I never heard an angry word from her, just excitement at my presence.

Not long after I left my home state, she left this world. I heard the funeral was small, too small to hold the impact she left on us. It took me two years to visit her little yellow house again. Rubber tires met the ground as my eyes met the familiar place. My mind once again filled with memories. But memories were cut short by the pull of devastation. By the sight of a bent garage door. Sagging flowers. Dead, twisted sagebrush pushing up from the driveway’s cracks. Like the flowers, I wilted.

What empty skeleton possessed this house? How could neglect, like rot, permeate what housed so many memories?

Where did the sun go?