My Empty House.

In 1999 I reached my 40^th birthday and I had saved up enough
to put a deposit on a modest house in Yennora.
It wasn’t much I suppose but at least it was mine.
I sat in the living room with a party hat on my head.
There wasn’t a sound and I was saddened by just how
Empty my house really was.
Hours passed and after a few chardonnay’s I feel asleep.
Half awake and half asleep I heard a knock at the door.
It was a little old man and his wife.

“Hello I’m Sidney Walters and this is my lovely wife Cheryl.
We used to live in this house, oh many years ago.
We were the original owners. Lots of memories here.
Cheryl goes into hospital tomorrow. She has a tumour
on the brain. They say they need to operate.
I promised to show her the old house before she goes into
hospital. I don’t know just for old time’s sake.
I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course come in” I said.

“Oh look it hasn’t changed much at all. This nice big hallway.
We had photographs of the children down each side.
That’s were I carried Cheryl across the threshold when we
got married. Oh it must have been 1955.
She was as light as a feather and looked so beautiful.
Oh look there’s the fire place.
Little Melanie was born in front of that fireplace.
 That was a night I’ll never forget. Cheryl had short
pregnancies and she just couldn’t wait. There was no
way she was going to make it to the hospital.
So we got some towels and she gave birth right here on the floor.
Oh there was some screaming and yelling that night.
After all the pain there was a new beautiful baby girl in the world.

Look Cheryl there is our old bedroom. We used to have a big iron posted bed
Right here.Oh God we were so in love.
Now let me see down to the right is the Melanie’s room
That was were little Johhny died. He just didn’t wake up one night.
The doctors sad it was sudden infant cot death or something.
That was the hardest thing I ever did was to hold a dead
baby in my arms.

At this Cheryl started to cry and I asked them if they really
thought it was a good idea to stay any longer.

“Yes you are right, We better get going. It’s a big day tomorrow”

Once they  were gone I woke up on the couch not sure if it was
all a dream. All I knew was that I would never think of  my house
as empty ever again.