Childhood House and Grief

I was in my childhood neighborhood in Casselberry, FL. I went to see my old house and there was a young Asian couple living in it. I spoke with the woman for a while. She had recently quit her job as a bone medicine saleswoman at her husband’s request. She seemed to regret having quit. She showed me her old card. I gave her my current one because I noticed our business cards looked similar. Their house was very cluttered and I thought to myself that it never looked that cluttered when my family lived there.

I thought the husband was a dick for asking his wife to quit her job, but when I met him he was actually very nice. He said he wanted to go out and have a good time with me. I understood that this was not sexual at all, so I agreed. While we were out, he got very drunk. He fell down in the street and was then run over by mobsters and killed.

I had to go to his grandmother’s house to tell her that her grandson had died. There were two men with me who were supposed to be friends of the dead Asian man. When I got to the grandmother’s house, she was a very old American woman. When she answered the door I started sobbing and couldn’t bring myself to say the words I needed to say. She knew what this meant and she started sobbing too. I came inside and hugged her and we both cried.

We spent the night and I kept crying throughout the night. I was feeling guilty because I felt that it was somehow my fault that the man had died. Although I felt very bad about the dead Asian man, I was much sadder about disappointing his grandmother. The next morning, the grandmother had a stroke because of her grief. She died from it and I cried even harder.

Suddenly I was back in my childhood house, but this time instead of the Asian family, it was my family again. The house looked completely different this time. I could not find my mother, but my dad was there and he was very young. There was a marathon of really old Roseanne episodes on television. Someone remarked that they were the lesser known beginning episodes from 1984. DJ was getting into trouble, as usual.