Forgotten Rooms

We didn't live near our relatives when I was growing up. We lived on the East Coast, and my mom was from the Mid-West, so we didn't see her family frequently. Most of my dad's family lived in the mountainous region of Southwestern Virginia, and we made one or two trips there per year for visits. One of the relatives we would see when we were in the area was my dad's Aunt Liza.

Two things that intrigued me when I was little were multi-story houses (we lived in a rancher), and scary stories. Visits to Aunt Liza's house were right up my alley.

Aunt Liza had been a robust, ambitious woman in her day, but that day had passed long before I came on the scene. My dad remembered her as a force of nature who would arrive in a chauffeured Packard to check on his family's welfare when he was a child, dispensing gifts, advice, and money. I only knew her as the crabby old crone who lived in her bed. Aunt Liza had suffered several debilitating strokes, and was confined to her room and tended by a nurse.

Aunt Liza's house was vast and spooky. Her room had previously been a parlor or receiving room which had been re-outfitted to accommodate her invalid's bed. This room was selected so she could be removed from the house swiftly in case of fire. One peek inside the house would convince anyone that this was a wise precaution. The house was stuffed to the gills with the detritus of a former, larger existence.

My Aunt Therza told me the house had seventy-five rooms; my dad put the count at thirty-six. Either way, it was a big house for a woman confined to one room. Aunt Liza reposed in a room to the left of the entrance hall. The nurse ushered guests to a parlor to the right of the front door to await an audience with Aunt Liza. These two rooms were kept in presentable shape, and I always wondered what the rest of the house looked like.

The house sat on a corner in a small Southern city and had three full floors, excluding attics and basement. There were three staircases; the staircase in the entrance hall swept up to the second floor like an ornate gangplank, and resembled the staircase on The Munsters. Midway into the house was a stairway that served floors one through three, and the servants' stairs in the rear of the home went from basement to attics.

On one visit I worked up the nerve to ask Aunt Liza if I could wander through her home. She said yes. I made it as far as the top of the front stairway, where the musty velvet curtains revealed gloomy hallways leading off into darkness. I returned to the parlor to enlist the protective services of my mother. She sighed in exasperation, but agreed to serve as bodyguard. She told me later that she was secretly thrilled because she had wanted to poke around in this house for years.

Aunt Liza's house could have been a template for any haunted house in a Hollywood movie. All the doors to the many rooms were firmly closed, and opening them revealed the same thing room after room. In her ambulatory past, she had owned several homes before being confined to her house in town. Apparently, most of the furnishings from her other houses had been moved here to decay. Rooms were cluttered with furniture concealed by ancient dropcloths, fallen plaster exposed dusty lathwork, and cobwebs in fantastic proportions connected unrelated flotsam and jetsam. Oblivious or beyond caring, although her front rooms were neat and tidy, Aunt Liza's house was falling apart around her ears.

Today, on my embarkation to sobriety, I am faced with many shuttered and forgotten rooms from my past. Each will need to be exposed to sunlight and fresh air. Dustcloths will have to be whipped off furnishings so that the integrity of these items can be properly evaluated. Many possessions, once deemed important, will be discarded; other neglected contents will be lovingly cleaned and cherished again. The structure will need repair if I am to live here safely. A thorough renovation awaits.

The task cannot be accomplished overnight. Some rooms will be locked, and a locksmith will be needed. This work shouldn't be done alone. The endeavor will not be easy, but in the end I won't be confined to one seemingly orderly room surrounded by ghosts and chaos.