It’s been a couple of years since I actually took a reasonable glare around the ravaged basement that had kept placid under my feet. I have always feared the dark that was kept under the depths of the wooden stairs, decorated in the unfriendliest designs of cobwebs and dust. My mother would traverse around the sofas we have thrown down there to reach the washing room that stood down there, alone like the lost child you would witness at an amusement park. The walls were decaying, and the piles of boxes that contained tools my father had used before we moved in this renovated home remain, waiting for their turn in line to rot into the earth, below the cold concrete flooring. The only thing that glimmers a faint light ever down there would be my grandmother’s commodities that layed beside the worn bar table you witness as you tread down the stairs. Even if the bags of clothing and antiques lay like Spartans killed in a bloody battle, the legacy remains beyond the worldly appearance.

I’m reminded of this legacy as I was asked to help clear out the basement with my friends and brothers during the beginning of October, since it was the final night to do so for the trashmen on my street to accept it. My grandmother’s things still remained in the debris, and it was strenuous to entirity to let them go. Bugs like centipedes and spiders came out from under the bags and luggage cases, like a festering wound on the body. Yet, it takes me back to the early years in my life. I could remember the moment where my grandmother foolishly killed two of the same centipedes I have found that were crawling in complete unison on her kitchen floor with a broom. I chuckled at the thought, as my friend and I carried the red luggage bag that labeled “Marlboro”, which was the cigarettes my grandmother used to love to smoke on her porch during those hot summer days, out to the front yard. There was so much to go through, yet there was so much little time to look back at the memories I held with her.

The departure set about when she started going to the hospital a couple of years back, fading in to discover that she had cervical cancer. I wasn’t aware of this until the final weeks of her life, as she battled with the strongest heart I could ever see within a person. During this time, she had lived in my house since my grandfather held a financial instability and had my father’s shoulder to depend on. Her physical appearance grew frail every day, yet her spirit grown two times as much as the previous day. I thought my grandmother held a lot more time to live because of her common chemotherapy, but of course cancer can only grow after every day. I remember that we always played video games on the Nintendo at her house a couple years before all of this, and it amazed me that a disease can transform a person so quickly without any care of delay. With no mood to do anything, I sat and stared as she stumbled out of her room with a cane and the help of my grandfather in complete discomfort. Being distraught at the sight, I became completely aware that she would never be the same grandmother that cooked in the morning when I stayed over her home on the summer weekends. I just sat and waited for the day to come… and it brought me to tears when my father addressed it to my siblings and I, sitting on the corner couch in my living room as him and my mother stood beside the foyer, at the end of the October in 2012. The same day, as I visited her in the hospital, I became speechless, biting at my own sentences, as I looked at her condition. She was at the final stage of the cancer, and it was unbearable to have a glance at her. I didn’t have anything to say, as I said my final goodbye in such indignation, leaving the hospital room with pieces of lead attached to the soles of my shoes.

To this day, I still regret the way my goodbye was expressed, and I wish I could’ve mentioned to her the times we had in her home on her death bed, and all of the memories that lied unspoken, during my last encounter with her in reality. Being in this basement just brings back all of these regrets that stuck to me a couple years back, and they return even stickier to my skin as I carried her worldly possessions to the trash, as I was instructed to do so by my oldest brother, Ryan. In a rush, I did it as fast as it takes to remove a bandaid, to avoid the long-term effects of the decisions I have initiated. With my grandfather leaving all of these possessions behind in my basement, it was inevitable for them to be disposed of, since I didn’t want to keep her things for my benefit, but only for the sake of respecting her. Today, however, nothing of my grandmother’s belongings remains near the bar table below me, but scattered in with trash that is meant to be trash. It has been a huge mistake to throw away these things she have left behind, as if she meant nothing to me. I write these regretful reflections in the basement, as I clean my load of laundry, peeking over to find nothing of my grandmother’s anymore. Just like cancer took her away, her things were taken away. I sigh, as I finish my load, returning upstairs to my reality.