I sat in the car with my feet curled under me, gazing out the window even though I had the route memorized. A playlist of my favorite songs looped in my earbuds, cranked up to drown out the insanity of my family.
Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we went. As the fields of trees shaded by the sunset flew past in a blur, I saw the inside of the quaint country house and smiled. It's been over a year since we visited, but I remember everything clear as day, just the way it always has been. The kitchen table with six wooden chairs around it - always enough for company, just in case - and Gramps' card table set up by the china cabinet with an unfinished puzzle scattered across it. Every time we went, there was a new puzzle, but I somehow never got to see him finish one. We always helped him put it together, or kept him busy by playing Triominoes or Mexican Train or some other card game that he'd ask us to play. He loves to play. I saw Nana in her blush pink rocking chair, grinning at Gramps as he lounged in dark his brown recliner and fussed with the Rubik's Cube that lived on his side table. We laughed at his jokes, even though we heard them every time we saw him. We laughed, not because they were funny, but because we loved him.
The SUV slowed to a stop in the gravel driveway. I ripped out my earbuds and set them in the seat, shoving my phone in my pocket. A smile lit my face as I jumped out of the car. The tiny white house was just where we had left it. Everything looked exactly the way I remembered.
Hopping up the two steps of the cement porch, I peeked through the kitchen window and waved at Nana. She smiled back from the blue recliner and I made my way into the house, ignoring the feeling that something was off. But when I entered the dining room, I couldn't ignore it anymore. Gramps' card table didn't have an unfinished puzzle on it. It was covered with random papers and letters. Things that he often ignored. And I knew - I knew without walking to the living room that he wasn't in his dark brown recliner. He wasn't grunting and flipping through channels. He wasn't solving his Rubik's cube for the hundredth time. He wasn't going to tell me the same jokes he always had, or poke me in the shoulder until I begged him to stop through my giggles, or smile a toothless grin. I knew. Because it wasn't until the moment that I walked into the house and saw the missing puzzle that I remembered he was gone. It's been a whole year, and somehow I still haven't wrapped my head around it. I was naïve enough to think that everything was still the same. But it's not.
I continued into the living room and gave Nana a hug as Mom set up the food in the kitchen. This time, I sat in her blush pink rocking chair as we talked. Nana had changed, too. She was bloated from not being able to move much, and she looked slightly more tired than she should be, like gravity was putting just a little more pressure on her than it was on the rest of the world. Everything in the house was blanketed with a thin layer of stillness, like the house was starting to take on characteristics of one that has been abandoned. But it was as if I was the only one who noticed it. Nana and I sat and talked and smiled, but if you asked me, I would not be able to tell you if that deep brown recliner was still there, because I couldn't get myself to look in the place where I knew it should be.
We went in to eat dinner, and there was enough room at the table for all of us, instead of Nana sitting on a stool at the counter. We all sipped Coke and ate taco pizza, as we had done every time we visited since I can remember. Gramps would have drank the whole 2 liter bottle if we let him. After dinner, we played cards. Some people got too competitive and ended up arguing, but I know that Gramps' typical cheating shenanigans would have lightened the mood. Nana gave us enough of a laugh by trying to steal other peoples' cards. And the night went on as if nothing was wrong, but there was this slight tinge in my chest that reminded me otherwise.
On the ride home, I couldn't think about anything except for what was missing. There was more missing than I could even name. Like the holes in Gramps' puzzles that we just couldn't find the pieces for. I don't know how to put it back together. I can't put it back together. And that's the thing about losing people. No matter how much you want it to, no matter how hard you try, no matter how convincingly you act like it is; it can never be the way it was before. His puzzle piece is gone. Now there's just a hole where he is supposed to be.
