The Buddha is right

Upadhi dukkhassa mūlanti. Attachment is the root of suffering.

And I have trouble letting go. Not usually of places though. I move through them quickly if I have my way. I think Grandma's place hits so hard is because in the last 20 months I've lost huge chunks of my childhood, Grandma, several cousins, Leonard Nimoy, David Bowie, Prince, Gene Wilder (Alan Rickman is more my young adulthood).. As with most Italian families, Grandma's kitchen was the center of the family. Until she went into the assisted living home at age 95, it was the center of most thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters.

But it was a weird place. I dream about it at least once a week for most of my adult life almost always in conjunction with magic and ghosts and not usually in a good way. I used to play strange games around the gated off cistern as a child where I would use petunia petals as dresses for sticks and then "Bloody Mary Tudor" would behead them (break them in half) and drop them down the well (I thought it was a well then). All things considered that is a fucked up game for a kid between the ages of 5-7. Don't even ask me how I knew about Blood Mary Tudor because I have no answer for that one.

So to the new people moving into grandma's house: good luck with the dining room wall that weeps water and the bricked up door in the basement that reappears in the form of water seeping in in the rain. Black snakes and giant huntsmen spiders love that basement. Enjoy.

Enjoy the sounds of the train rocketing past even though the tracks were removed 30 years ago (It scared the piss out of Kanda and Soul while we were there so it's not just my imagination)

Enjoy the sounds of someone rearranging furniture in Great Grandma's upstairs room, the distinctive sound of wooden furniture being dragged over wooden floors (back like it was prior to the 1950s when this house was a mere 4 rooms, two up, two down with two staircases going up). I don't know if that's Grandma Josephine or her son Libertino or maybe one of the boarders they used to take in in the 20s and 30s. (Kanda and Soul would go alert then run up the stairs, freeze and cry at the door when that was heard. I told mom and she froze and said 'Mom always said that but we thought it was just coons or she was just trying to get us to come down there)

Enjoy the children on the stairs, laughing. That's probably just the residuals of Mary and Joseph, grandma's siblings who died in the same week from the flu epidemic.

Enjoy the sudden and intense bursts of tobacco smoking in the basement, that's grand dad (when I removed the last of my stuff from there just before I came back two weeks ago it was so intense we could barely stand it)

New People, don't be surprised if you see my grandma in the kitchen. Her name is Assunta but she'll answer to Santy. Don't expect her to be overly nice. Frankly I'm expecting her to phone call me or mom once you move in. She did slap both of us awake after she died after all. and her daughter Loretta did the same after her death when her kids sold her house (overly cheaply). She called Mom to tell her there were strangers in the house and please come get her because she was scared.

New People you might not believe everything I just said but every word of it happened.

Enjoy the haunted old house. We took good care of it for 100 years. It's your turn.