Mrs. Elia Rose, née Bra­ca, died in her apart­ment some­time in the win­ter of 2015. She was 98 or 99, a radio star of the 1930s. Her stage name was Lynne Howard.

I knew her as a frail fig­ure who walked the hall­ways for exercise.

One time we found her sit­ting by the win­dow as smoke bil­lowed from her apart­ment. She said, ​“I turned the oven on for heat, as you do, and my nurse had left a chick­en in there.” It was the mid­dle of July.

They came and cleaned out her apart­ment. First her chil­dren, then the neigh­bors, then the pro­fes­sion­als. This is what hap­pens with death. Peo­ple come and touch your things. They keep them or throw them in the fire. Why have things at all? Is your spir­it held in these objects? When they are burned, buried, or crushed is your spir­it released?

Who hon­ors the spaces left by the dead? Mrs. Rose occu­pied a space. She filled it with her his­to­ry and the his­to­ry of her ances­tors and the can­vass­es of her dead hus­band Her­man. Elia Bra­ca Rose, a Jew­ess who adopt­ed a gen­tile name, as you do.

— Maya Ciarrocchi

Shot­gun house

Tall old oak

Grandiose hall­way

Roy­al car­pet runner

Glass/​brass ornate doorknobs

Baby grand piano

Musty base­ment

Ceram­ic pigs

Porce­lain dolls

Moth­balls in card­board boxes

Dim green lights

Dusty pool table

Five thou­sand piece puz­zle of a black & white tiger in space –

There were pieces missing

Steep stair­case to the sec­ond floor bed­room to the left and right

To the left my aunt’s

To the right was my grand­ma and grandpa’s

I used to watch car­toons with grand­pa in the liv­ing room

He died on my fourth birthday

Kitchen cab­i­nets filled with black olives

My grandmother’s name was Olive

My last mem­o­ry of the home was watch­ing my moth­er and aunt

Fight­ing over who got what

An empire of boxes

— Scott Wheet

My moth­er pur­chased 35 Pine Court in the mid-1960s, about ​’64.

It was a one-sto­ry bun­ga­low. Two bed­rooms, a bath­room, kitchen on the back. Not quite enough win­dows on the front and a lit­tle brick fire­place in the cen­ter that always ran counter to pur­pose and made the house cold­er in the win­ter with drafts.

The house had been built on spec, as part of a lit­tle group­ing of sim­i­lar bun­ga­lows around San­ford Lake. All of this was in Michi­gan, a state with over 10,000 lakes, and yet San­ford Lake was made by damming two rivers and flood­ing a slight val­ley to build small hous­es so that a sin­gle woman, with hopes of mar­ry­ing soon, could buy a home of her own after all those years see­ing the world through Appalachi­an Depres­sion-era eyes. The sum­mer after my moth­er died, the house was put on a trail­er and cart­ed off. The crawl­space was filled in. The mail­box tak­en down.

— Deb Travis

On the beau­ti­ful­ly ornate met­al gate were the words Le Paradise.

Pots of pan­sies and hydrangeas cir­cled the white stones of the driveway.

The house stood on the right and a minia­ture repli­ca was in the gar­den adja­cent. Jenny’s play­house. A rot­ted ted­dy bear adorned the door­way. It was miss­ing an eye, the oth­er replaced by a button.

The white, wood­en garage still remained stuffed with exces­sive amounts of fur­ni­ture and rugs. This was a shel­ter for trea­sures which did not fit in the house or the home.

A brass Tibetan lion was used to announce vis­i­tors. A sim­ple rhythm of knocks…

Inside there were more trea­sures and a majes­tic por­trait of my dou­ble moms hung above the mar­ble fire­place. Enter­ing the hall­way, pic­tures and plac­ards hung every­where cov­er­ing every avail­able space of the green ivy wall­pa­per. One was crooked. I straight­ened it. Above my head, hung a myr­i­ad of glass ici­cles. Some miss­ing, bro­ken by an ille­gal bas­ket­ball game. In the hall, count­less rooms — stud­ies, kitchen pantries — and a gar­den house filled with obscure and unique arti­facts, relics and tal­is­mans. For the imag­i­na­tion. Not sprawling.

Tight­ly packed as if a dollhouse.

Spi­ral stair­case, bed­rooms upstairs. Jenny’s to the right of the land­ing. Mary’s at the end of the hall. Goth­ic canopy bed of cur­tains and orna­ments strewn; clothes, wigs, books, mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, The Durham Her­ald, New York

Times, Dai­ly Tarheel.

North Car­oli­na let­ter­heads cov­ered with thank you notes.

— Aman­da K. Miller