In the summer of 1959 our family faced a life changing crisis. A few months after the birth of my younger brother, Michael, my mom…who had developed Chronic Heart Failure following a bout of rheumatic fever as a child…suffered an episode which resulted in a lengthy hospital stay. My dad, faced with the daunting task of raising four young children while working full time, moved us in to live with his parents. My dad felt that my mom’s collapse was caused by her strained relationship with her mother, who was prone to be stern and judgemental toward my mom, so the decision was made to sell the house on Vine Street in order to create some distance in the hope that it would aid in her recovery.

My maternal grandparents lived on Rose Street, just north of the center of town. It was in the older part of town, a mix of Victorian and Georgian era houses on a quiet, tree lined street. My grandparents’ house, where my family would live for the summer of 1959, was a two story Victorian set on a narrow city lot. The faded white paint gave the exterior an understated appearance but it was a well built house, though the plumbing and electrical could have used an upgrade. On the first floor was the living room, dining room, and kitchen while the bedrooms and bathroom were upstairs. It had a full basement where they stored relics of bygone years. A classic Victorian down to the floral wallpaper. There was a somber feeling to the house and a cool, almost unnatural, stillness. My grandparents had bought the house soon after moving west and settling in Stockton in the late 1920’s. They had raised six children there but now it was just the two of them. It was a clean, quiet house except on Christmas Day, when my family along with my aunts and uncles and dozen or so cousins descended on the house, creating chaos and cacophony.

Most of my memories from that time have since faded. Mostly I remember my feelings from that time.. confused, lonely, and a bit afraid. I was too young to understand why my mom was in the hospital, I only knew she was there. Between working full time and getting the house on Vine Street ready for sale I didn’t see much of my dad that summer. My brother Bill who was five years older was rarely around and Michael was an infant so my sister Mary, who was a couple of years younger, and I were pretty much left on our own. Most of our days were spent parked in front of the television watching cartoons. Grandma would bring us chocolate milk and cookies while she went about her daily chores. I remember one day Mary and I gorged ourselves on green figs from the tree in the back yard and I got so sick that I can’t eat raw figs to this day. At night my sister and I shared a bed in one the rear bedrooms upstairs. It was then that an uneasy dread would well up. It felt like there was a presence in the room watching over us. There wasn’t a feeling of good or evil, just a cold melancholy. Hanging from one side of the dresser mirror hung a wooden cutout of a football player illuminated by a shaft of light coming through the window and in my child’s mind it became a personification of the dread I sensed. A talisman of an unseen sadness.

My grandfather, Orson P Bird, was a quiet man. A man of a stoic demeanor and simple habits. He was small in stature but chiseled from a lifetime of hard work. Born and raised in Kansas, he met my grandma while at college in Missouri. After the wedding they had moved to southern Colorado where my dad was born, the fifth of six children. They homesteaded a small piece of land and he found work in the mines. His time in the mines left him with a grip that would leave a mark. After a few years the mines closed and the family moved to Stockton on the eve of the Great Depression. Times were hard and struggling to find work he signed on as a pro wrestler with the carnival traveling up and down the state taking on all comers. When World War Two began he found work as a welder in the shipyards. After the war he had built a small amusement park on a piece of land leased at Oak Park which he was running at the time. It had been a hard life and you could see the scars on his face and his hands, but the scars inside he kept to himself.

My grandmother, Aileen, was a kind and gentle woman, petite in stature and soft spoken when she spoke at all. She was a humble and pious woman but beneath her modest demeanor had a steely toughness that spoke to her Missouri roots. Hers had not been an easy life, raising six children in the wilds of Colorado, managing a household during the depression, watching her sons go off too war. A Gold Star decal displayed on the front door spoke of the one who didn’t return.

My uncle Raymond was their second child and the eldest of five sons. To his sister and his brothers he was not just a sibling, but their protector and their leader. When their father was away with the carnival during the winter months Raymond was left to take on duties far beyond his years. With war coming Raymond had joined the army and had been assigned to the Army Air Corps. While stationed in Ohio he fell in love and was married, but soon after his squadron was deployed to the South Pacific.

Raymond was a top turret gunner on a B-24. Five days before Christmas of 1943 during a mission over Maloelap Atoll near the Marshall Islands his plane was hit and forced to ditch in the ocean. As the crew was abandoning the aircraft the Japanese fighters that had been pursuing them began strafing the life rafts. It was reported that Uncle Raymond stayed at his post, proving cover fire for the rafts until the plane went underwater. For his bravery in combat he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with Oak leaf Cluster, and the Purple Heart posthumously. There was a bookcase in the living room of the house where family pictures were displayed. There, prominently placed was a photo of Uncle Raymond in uniform with his medals displayed below. He is memorialized at the Tablets of the Missing monument at the National Cemetery at Pearl Harbor and in the Honor Roll of the Dead at the National Archives.

Honors and medals, however, do not make up for the loss of a loved one. They cannot replace the smile, the embrace, the heartfelt conversation now left unsaid. The family was devastated by the loss. It was as if a piece of themselves had been ripped away. I know my dad never got over it. A sadness so deep that it seemed to seep into the very walls of the house. Time doesn’t stop and lives move on, but the scars never go away. When I think about that house I can’t help thinking about that gold star and the sadness it had brought to that house.

By the end of that summer my mom had recovered and the new house was ready to move in, so we left the house on Rose Street. We would return to live there many years later after my grandparents had moved out. I found that the sense of unease had diminished, but still lingered. At some point years later I shared my feelings about the house with Michael and Mary and found that they had also felt it. That same unnatural chill to the house, the same unseen melancholy that haunted the house on Rose Street.