We’ve now been living at the new house for nearly two months. It still doesn’t have a name…I kind of like calling it No Name New House, but I imagine that James will come up with something better.
We lived a year or so in Cemestos Gardens before settling on its name. I remember laughing about it, the absurdity of naming our 1,144 square foot house like it was some grand estate. Hell, who am I kidding? It was, and is, a grand estate.
The story of Cemestos Gardens is wrapped up in the story of my brother. I can’t think about that house without thinking of him.
My mom bought the house in 1997 with money she inherited from her mother. She already had a house in Clinton; this was her fallback if anything were to ever happen. The house needed an occupant, and my brother Justin needed a place to stay. At some point in 1997, Justin, 23, moved in.
I went to visit him once. I hadn’t spent much time in Oak Ridge and was totally confused by the roads. I was a little confused by the house, too, as it wasn’t completely apparent which door was the front and which one was the back. I knocked, but he was soundly asleep and didn’t answer.
In November, 1997, I found out I was pregnant. I was barely 20; James and I had been dating just a month. I really remember so little of that time…memories that I would like to be crisp and sharp are fuzzy, distant, blurred.
But not all of them. Some memories are sharp, and crisp, and sometimes feel as fresh as they had just happened.
On June 30, 1998, I sat, 8 months pregnant, with James on my old brown couch in my apartment in Fort Sanders. I had treated myself to cable and we were watching X-Files reruns on FX. The loud knock on the door made both of us jump. I was surprised to find my mom and step-dad at the door – almost a pleasant, confused surprise for the first moment, and then the dull instinct of something is wrong fell over me.
“Justin is dead,” my mom said. I very distinctly remember not understanding her, like she was speaking a foreign language. It just didn’t compute. I don’t think that it computed for a very long time; sometimes it still doesn’t compute.
Justin had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at age 12. He had a few scares over the years, and didn’t do the best job of maintaining his disease, but for the most part he was able to stay healthy. But not this time.
Who knows what really happened? He was at a party the night before. Perhaps he had a little too much to drink and fell asleep before he was able to eat a blood-sugar sustaining snack. Maybe he simply miscalculated – thought that he could make it until morning without eating. We’ll never know. Whatever the circumstances, he went into insulin shock early in the morning of June 30 and died in his bedroom, the corner bedroom of Cemestos Gardens.
His funeral was on July 9 at the Chapel on the Hill. I sat, still 8 months pregnant, and thought about my mom, who was 9 months pregnant with me when her father died. She told me that everyone worried she would go into labor at his funeral. She didn’t, and I was born 10 days later.
October waited a bit longer than that, and was born on August 6. I had moved out of my apartment a month prior, and James, October and I were squatting at my mom’s house in Clinton.
We needed a place to stay, and once again the Cemestos house needed an occupant. We moved in on July 26. My mom pointed out some iris stalks in the front flowerbed by the steps to the sidewalk. “Justin planted those,” she said. “Take care of them.”
They bloom year after year without much tending. I divided them once and gave out some to James’ coworkers. I lazily left a few out back, where they took root. Year after year, flower gardens. Justin’s gardens. Cemestos Gardens.
The day before we moved to No Name New House, I dug up several to bring along. Spotz and Lugnut volunteered to help plant them. Working together in the late spring sunshine, we dug holes, got dirty and successfully planted 9 or 10 irises. They’re looking a little shocked from the move, but they’ll bounce back. Irises are very hardy.
…
It’s been 10 years since Justin died, and the first year that I haven’t been in Cemestos Gardens on the anniversary. It makes for a little bit of melancholy on this bright Monday morning.