“In My Father’s House Are Many Rooms” by Janci Patterson

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“Let me know when you need to haul loads to the dump,” The Elders Quorum President says as he hands me the keys to my late grandmother’s home. “I’ll send some ward members over with a truck.”

“Thank you,” I say. “But it might take a while. I want to settle into the place first.”

The Elder’s Quorum President gives me a look that says if it were up to him, we’d be emptying the house with a backhoe.

“I’m never setting foot in that house again,” my mother said. Her two sisters both preceded my grandmother in death, so no one remains but me to witness what remains.

Willow trees weep across the roof, sheltering the once-sunny yard. Once my grandmother tended rows of hydrangeas and beaming peonies, but the blooms have shriveled from neglect. Stalwart irises still peek out from among the thistles and hogweed.

I unlock the front door and step back in time. The house remains as it was when my grandfather died, his coats still hanging in the closet, his desk covered in papers my grandmother never dared touch, even though his temper died with him.

The bedrooms that once belonged to my mother and her sisters still hold their childhood dolls. Yellowed photographs are tacked up above cherry-wood vanities covered in crusty cosmetics. I dip my hands into bowls of coins and stale mints and broken trinkets, letting the jumble drip between my fingers.

That first evening, I find my grandmother in the den, kneeling next to an overflowing bin of art supplies. She looks younger than she did in hospice, when the scent of decay clung to her as if parts of her died long before her spirit left her body. Her hands are steady now, and they reach for a set of watercolor brushes.

“Let me help,” I say, and I open the still-sealed package. I clear the nearby table, shifting ceramic owls and a pile of unsent greeting cards onto the floor to make space. In the bin, I find a clean sheet of watercolor paper. I dump crumpled wrappers and petrified chewing gum from a homemade ceramic ashtray and fill it with water.

I step back, offering my grandmother the space. Her hands hesitate over the brushes, and then she lifts one, dips it into the water, and runs it across the paper, leaving behind a brilliant yellow streak.

I settle into a rhythm. Mornings in the garden uncovering flowers, their leaves fragile and wrinkled, waiting for the sun. Afternoons sifting through the house, sorting the treasures of several lifetimes, none of them mine. My grandmother remains at the table, painting flowers from memory—snapdragons and hollyhocks and tulips. I have been working almost a week when I find my aunt Patricia in the garden, tending to a bed of bleeding hearts. She has found a discarded pair of pruning sheers, dented and rusted from use and neglect, and is lovingly cutting back dead stalks to encourage the new, tender growth. I join her, letting her movements teach me how to cut away the ruin to encourage rebirth.

I overlook my aunt Susan, who I barely knew, so young was I when she died, until she whispers to me as I stand in the door to my grandfather’s study: “don’t go in there.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “Come with me. We can go in together.”

But as I enter the study, she remains in the hall, painted against the wallpaper. I run my fingers over my grandfather’s papers, curled and yellowing, some crumbling at the corners.

In the fireplace, I find my grandfather. Huddled and brooding, burrowed so tight in the soot that he has become one with it.

I leave him there for three days while I tempt Susan away from the hall. I open all the windows and doors and call to her from the yard, where Patricia and I have cleared the weeds from trellis and the pergola, and fresh green things are beginning to stretch their fingers toward the sky. Patricia and I prune the wild rose bushes, hacking relentlessly, thorns tearing our arms, though only mine deign to bleed. Beyond the roses, we uncover a firepit, empty and cold, set down in a gully, surrounding stone benches long ago swallowed by ivy.

My grandmother joins us, trading her paintbrush for a machete, chopping away at the vines. We divide the detritus into piles—green for the mulch bin, dry stalks for the wood pile. Susan creeps from the house, keeping to the shadows, and paints herself into the garden wall.

I fetch a shovel from the garage and carefully lift my grandfather out of the fireplace. He sheds through the house, ash soiling the rugs and darkening the hardwood. He is heavy at the end of my fulcrum, but I carry him steadily, and when I reach the back door to take him into the yard, my aunts hold it open.

In the cradle of my shovel, my grandfather cringes away from the sunlight. He is wound in a ball, wrapped over and over in the layers of ash to protect himself. I know I cannot separate him from the soot, so I bring him to the firepit and gingerly lower him in.

Together we pile the dried stalks and fallen branches over him, as if tucking him in for a long sleep. I fetch a matchbook from overflowing drawer, and toss stick after stick until the pile catches light. The flames climb, sending smoke and silence into the sky.

The four of us hold hands, watching as the plume whisks my grandfather into the air, whittling him away until the ash is just ash, the fire only a fire.

We stand witness, until the dry pile is consumed, the flames only a glow.

Tomorrow I’ll tell my mother it’s finally safe to come home.

This piece was published in 2026 as part of the 15th Annual Mormon Lit Blitz by the Mormon Lit Lab. Sign up for our newsletter for future updates.