My grandparents left the house for me just like how they lived in it. A small, but lived-in home; one they chose to spend the rest of their days in.
They bought the cottage decades ago, with a big front yard and a pond behind it. They would sit by the pond under the morning sunlight, humming along with the birds that frequently chirped and soared overhead. A wooden door, and a cool, metal handle for them to easily clean.
On the inside, the walls are covered - flower patterns dance along the walls, just like how the grapevines do on the outside. The wallpaper is sticky on some areas - the glue has seeped through with time.
They merely had a ceiling fan to keep them cool, and that fan never turned off, even after they left the house forever.
After a long day, they would sit down on their brown, tufted couch over some brewed earl grey tea. The couch still smells like my grandma's perfume - powdery, flowery, and faint. The direction of the furs of the rug under the dusty coffee table is scrambled - traces of handprints, one big and one a bit smaller, then a not-so-well drawn heart between.
Along the flowery walls are memoirs of past friends, family, and themselves. Them, in love and in college. Them, on their wedding day. Them, in front of this very cottage. Some pictures are more recent than others; they gained more colour as the pictures reached the corner of the room. At the end of the wall are bookshelves, filled from top to bottom with what looked like photo albums. Their lives encapsulated in photographs.
The spines of almost every album on those bookshelves are creased, and there are bank streaks on the shelves where dust should be. Everything's a bit dusty - whether it's the coffee table, or the wooden counters, or the television stand - but the photo albums aren't. The photos on the walls aren't.
They cherished their lives together, lived and re-lived it every day together. The smell of their last meal still lingers faintly in the air, and even after they left, their warmth still lingers all the same way.
Written by Marsya E.