…your house away. Daddy says it’s sold.”
The small room at the bottom of her drawing was a storage room in my son’s basement. The “black fence” was the gate of a senior care facility down the street from their house. My granddaughter, Lily, had heard her parents discussing both.
I went home and called my lawyer, Ms. Patel. She checked the county records that afternoon. A sale of my house was scheduled to close in nine days. My son, Greg, had signed for me using a power of attorney I’d given him three years ago, after my hip surgery. I’d forgotten I’d never revoked it.
Ms. Patel revoked it that day and contacted the buyer’s title company. The sale was cancelled.
The movers arrived the next Tuesday. I was sitting on my front porch with Ms. Patel and a cup of tea. I showed the moving company’s driver a copy of the cancelled sale and the revocation. He apologized and drove away.
Greg showed up an hour later, furious. “Mom, you can’t live alone anymore,” he said.
“I’m seventy,” I said. “I bake every Friday with your daughter. I drive. I pay my bills. I can live alone just fine. What I can’t do is live in your basement while you spend my house.”
He didn’t have an answer.
Lily still comes over every Friday. Last week, she drew a new picture. It shows me standing in front of my own house, with a red front door and roses by the porch. Underneath, she wrote: “GRANDMA STAYS HOME.”
