I was raised by my grandparents. My mother lived with us too, but she worked constantly and eventually moved in with my now stepfather. I moved with her for a time, and lived on my own for another two, but went back to my grandparents' after it was clear my grandpa didn't have much time left.

(Also I loved his cooking)

The house we lived in had been in the family for 30 years. I loved that house like a family member.

When my grandfather died in 2011, my grandmother took an extended trip to New York (about three months) to visit family and I stayed behind to work. During that time, my family began moving everything out so that my grandma could surrender the house to the bank.

First the spare bedrooms went. The back room where my aunt once stayed. The second room where my mom once slept.

Then the family room. The couch I'd spent so many hours watching TV and on. The computer desk at which I'd spent so many days playing WoW. The tacky paintings my grandma hung years before. (She said they were classy, no one questioned her.)

Everything in the kitchen was next. The pots and pans. The plates and bowls. Our cups, thermoses. The silverware that I'd eaten with my entire life.

After the kitchen was gouged and gutted, the dining room followed suit. Wooden chairs and a table that once held dozens of celebrations upon. Almost every person I'd ever been friends with had at some point eaten from that table.

My grandmother's room was after that. The bed my grandpa died in. The chair he sat in every day.

I was still living there, so we left a couch and TV in the living room, and my bedroom was still relatively untouched.

I lived by myself for almost two months in that empty house, squatting in what was once a thriving, bustling hub of chaotic happiness and constant motion.

The silence got to me the most. I couldn't afford the bills, so I had no cable or internet. I ended up keeping an old DVD of Iron Man on repeat to avoid the consuming void of noiseless sadness.

I couldn't sleep in my room. It was...lonelier. I guess I felt that if I spent my time in the living room where my grandparents once spent their days in that I'd somehow feel closer to...something.

Once the electricity got turned off I lasted one night in the husk of my family home before I couldn't take it anymore. It was too heartbreaking, seeing something you once loved slowly dying before your eyes, like losing someone to cancer.

I still spent some time there, mostly smoking pot with my friends on the back porch.

The house was locked and my mother had the key by then, so I had to climb through the kitchen window to get in.

(I was the only one who knew how to fiddle it just right to pop open, a skill honed from years of experience of sneaking in late.)

I still remember the old box of cereal that sat on that counter when I crawled in. It was the last thing I'd eaten there before I left.

I sat there for a moment, reflecting on the fact that the last thing any member of my family would do there was eat stale generic Fruity Pebbles by them self, standing at the window, watching the stagnant lake that sat in the back yard one last time.