Somewhere where I got that awful feeling on the pit of my stomach...

Changing places, some place that changed, somewhere where I got that awful feeling on the pit of my stomach... I’ll write this time about a place, not about  a person, but that place that makes me remember about a loved person. That place is my grandmother’s house, at Huehuetenango. Well, I was borned in Huehuetenango 16 years from now. I can remember this house being so huge I could get lost, with a big garden in the middle of the house, full of roses of any color that my grandma loved and got good care of, the tallest tangerine tree you can imagine where we used to pick up tangerines with a orange wooden stick with my little brother, and the oldest turttle living you’ll ever meet; also a huge blue and white fountain at the middle of that beautiful garden. I was a baby, I can’t remember all of this, I can only look at pictures and notice I was there at sometime. I moved to El Salvador for a couple of years until my parents got divorced, I was two years old when I went back to Huehuetenango, my whole family was waiting for us with their arms wide open.  My grandmother used to wear this weird perfume I never liked, it smelled as roses with alcohol, like any old ladie will wear, and gave us candies that tasted as her perfume because she kept them together at her closet.

My grandfather had the biggest supermarket at Huehuetenango, it was called Casa Saenz, it was in the same block as my grandoma's house; you could find anything in there, from bicycles, bubble gum, fruit and vegetables, until whatever your house would need. My grandma’s house was huge, but at some point it was too big for my grandma because all of her children had grown up and moved away, so they decided to divide the house in two, to make the supermarket much bigger.  So the fountain was divided in two as the garden did. The house still big enough to play and run trough the rooms, living room, kitchen, garden, the long hallway and the back part of the house, it was all connected. We lived in Guatemala city, my mother, brother and I. In the same apartment I had lived for fourteen years now. We went to Huehuetenango very often. We never missed Christmas, I have a big family, we exchanged presents, we waited for Santa Claus to come, we ate the most delicious food on planet earth, we always burned fireworks at the street.  At 12:00 pm the living room was full of presents, every color of gift package you can imagine; there was all king of gifts because my family has always been extremely different from each other, we also prayed to God and thank for everything we have and also celebrate Jesus birthday;. We were eighteen grandsons, and I have 4 aunts and 1 uncle. This house was always full of joy, happiness, laughs and love. This house was one of my favorite places I could ever be.

Everyone grew older, my big cousins started to get married, and all of the sudden they had children, my aunts became a grandma and my uncle a grandpa. When did all this happen? Timed passed away so fast... My grandma passed the way 2 days after Christmas, she had a stroke,  she had been living in Guatemala city for two years, because nobody went to Huehuetenango as often as before, it seemed that everybody had their own family and better things to do. That last Christmas we spent without my grandma was the worst night I had had in my whole life. I remember me sitting in my living room without a smile in my face, my aunt, and my aunt smoking a cigarette, my uncle eating as usual. I couldn’t call “Christmas” this night.

My grandma's house at Huehuetenango was totally abandoned,  nobody went there anymore, it was full of old stuff that nobody cared about. One of my aunts decided to go there and clean everything up, she got all stuff together and then she gave everyone what they owned, my mom got old pictures and letters,   her first baby dress and school uniform. This aunt made a Christmas meeting last year, to remember old times, we share with everyone, my mom did the dessert my grandma used to cook at Christmas night, and we did the gift exchange too. This aunt of mine was the person that laughed as nobody did, although she had cancer she was happiness itself, this year she passed the way, I’m proud of having the opportunity of being her niece.

This year we went to Huehuetenango one last time with my mother, we went to check my grandmother’s house for the last time. It was dark and dusty, with all roses dead, with the fountain all broken up, I remember when we walked inside my mom had teary eyes, this was the exact moment when I got that awful feeling on the pit f my stomach. A weird feeling inside my heart, this place used to remind me about happiness and love, now it is an empty place. My family decided to rent this big place, just because it is so old they had to start a construction from the very start, some months from now my grandma’s house had been demolished, my uncle went to take pictures of the whole process, when I saw them I couldn’t think about anything but sadness.  How would this year Christmas’s night be?