The keys felt heavier in my hand today than they had ever felt before. I had held them so many times, but never under circumstances like these. Before, it was always a joyous occasion - because of the distance, I didn’t get the chance to see my grandfather very often. Mostly I saw him around the holidays, and I grew up in a “do the holiday right” sort of family, so there were always lights, music, dancing, presents, and more food than any one family could ever eat on any given night. Today, though, it felt dark and cold, as though it were warning me that I shouldn’t enter. But, I reminded myself, this is what I wanted. This was my inheritance, and when I was given the option to sell the house or keep it, I opted to keep it in the family. It’d been with me for as long as I could remember, so the image of some other family in it just felt too peculiar.
I steeled my nerves and opened the large front door. Despite my reservations, the inside was dark, but still felt like my second home. Grandpa had always had a huge house. He’d bought it when he was newly married in the hopes that he and Grandma would have lots of kids. He did manage to accomplish that, and the house was always busy with aunts, uncles, and cousins of mine. That’s why, when the will was read, I think we were all surprised that I was the sole heir to the house. Yes, I was the closest with him, but in this market, selling a house this huge would have been quite a windfall, even split between all of us. But no, the others got various trinkets, and I got the house.
Why do I sound like I’m complaining about this? I’m not, trust me. It just feels weird that, with all the years of family being around this house, I’m now the one in charge of it.
Some work was needed on it, of course - what house didn’t need some work when you first get it? And add onto that, while my grandfather was pretty active right up until his death, he was still in his 80s. At that age, you can keep it clean, but you’re probably not going to do a lot of replacing carpets or restaining the deck. At that age, I would have to assume that while you want your living space to look nice, you might have to choose between that and something that is more meaningful with your time.
I’m definitely stalling. I understand that. But there’s something about signing the papers to make the house mine that means this whole thing has come to an end. The funeral is done, the urn is with my aunt since she desperately wanted to keep it, and I get to renovate this house and make it my own.
“Mr. Marshall?” called a voice from the parlor.
“Yeah, I’m on my way,” I yelled back. I fumbled with the keys in my hands again. I’ve just got to sign these papers and then I’ll be on my way towards a new normal, I said to myself. Then I stepped down the hall towards my new life.
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“So Brian, have you lived in the area for long?” the lawyer asked me as I was signing what felt like my millionth piece of paper. I knew there was going to be a lot of paperwork involved, but I was still surprised when I saw a stack of papers two inches thick.
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“Yeah, I grew up in the area. My parents lived probably twenty minutes away from here, and I now live probably 30.”
“That’s great! I’m sure you got to spend a lot of time here as a child.”
“Quite a bit, yeah. I basically grew up with this as my second home. It’ll be nice to be back in it.”
“I’m sure it will! Now, I’ve just got one last page for your to sign, which is just the surveyor’s notes, and then I’ll be on my way, and you can get to enjoying your new house.”
My hand hovered over the signature line for a minute, not because I had a problem with the surveyor’s notes, but because the last signature was the largest step. This would all be real, the house would be mine, and I would have to deal with all of it. Part of me still felt like a young kid who was in no way ready for the kind of commitment that this house was going to take. The other part, though - the adult part of me - put the pen to the paper, and officially added my name to the list of people who had owned the house. It was over, it was done, and it was mine.
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Anyway, that was a few weeks ago, and while I still feel weird to call this house mine, I’ve gotten more used to it. I’m having this fun in between the process of trying to fix up the house, but also trying to move in, because if I own a house, it feels foolish to also be paying rent elsewhere. And my idea is, if I fix it up enough, I can rent out some of the far away rooms, because I definitely don’t need this much space to myself. The first day I got this house, I went through and counted all the rooms - it has your standard kitchen, dining room, and living room, but there are a total of 6 bathrooms and 12 rooms that could be considered bedrooms (although they’d have to be cleaned out, because for the most part, right now they are storage, offices, guest rooms, and what could generously be called a gym).
The largest room by far was the master bedroom, which had both a huge closet and its own on suite bathroom. That was the room that my grandfather had used as his room, and I was planning to claim it as mine, since the room is easily twice as large as any of the others. It was closer in size to the living room, in all honesty, and had been outfitted as such, with a loveseat, a couple of chairs, and a coffee table over in the corner of the room. I had never gotten the chance to ask my grandfather why he had such an elaborate seating area in his bedroom, and for that I am grateful. The look of it was nice, though - while I didn’t plan on doing a lot of sitting in there, the couch might be a nice place for my yellow lab, Duke, to sleep on. I know my grandfather probably would have hated that, but hey, this was my house now, and a good dog needs a good place to sleep.
“Duke, come here!” I yelled to him, as I hauled up what seemed to be my thousandth box, which luckily was also one of my last - sure, I probably still had some odds and ends at the old apartments that I would have to grab when I went to clean up, but a vast majority of it was finally there. Duke came bounding up the stairs after me, carrying a stuffed football toy in his mouth. His excitement at having more than a one bedroom apartment to run around in was clearly visible as he bounded up the stairs past me, then back down, continuing in the hyper pattern the entire time I walked up the stairs. Currently, the yard didn’t have a fence on it, but it was one of the first things that I was planning to fix when I officially moved in. And there definitely were a lot of things that I was planning to fix around here - I had never been much of a handyman in my past apartments, but that was in part because I was leasing. It was also in part because I had no idea what I was doing, and that was definitely not something that was going to immediately change here, but a man can dream. I come from a long line of men who were able to at least possibly fix parts of their house, and I am fortunate enough to have what a lot of them didn’t - all the powers of the internet behind me. You can learn anything on YouTube, and I intended on proving that, starting one fence at a time.
Duke finally decided that he wanted to be upstairs and ran into the master bedroom, leaping directly onto my bed. “Hey now,” I scolded lightly, “you know you’re not supposed to be on the bed.” Duke wagged his tail and looked at me with those puppy dog eyes that assured me that, yes, he did in fact know that, but was hoping that I would let him get away with it just this one. And he was right - what with all the moving, I was exhausted. I collapsed down on the bed, laying next to Duke, who happily cuddled up next to me, and started to fall asleep. There were still so many things that I needed to finish on my to-do list - I hadn’t even gotten a chance to clean anything, much less start unpacking, but it was all things that would have to wait until tomorrow. The rest of the day was going to be devoted to sleep and sleep alone.