The Pinewood Rocking Chair

In the autumn of that year, my aunt was hospitalized in rural Vermont, so my father drove his brother, my two siblings, and me to the small town of Millbrook to visit her. We missed a week of school, and it turned out she passed away the following morning. That first night in her old farmhouse, I dreamt of her sitting in her rocking chair, watching me with a stillness that felt more like a warning than a farewell.

We stayed on for the wake and the funeral, trying to hold together a family that had frayed over the years. By the end of the first day, the old arguments resurfaced, but we managed to find a fragile peace. The second day of the wake, I broke down, sobbing into my cousin’s shoulder, overwhelmed by the finality of it all.

My cousin, my sister, and I decided to stay at our aunt’s house—now my cousin’s—the night before the funeral, to prepare together. The house was old, with creaking floors and a musty smell that clung to the curtains. My aunt used to spend her evenings in the parlor, pacing between the windows and the fireplace, her silhouette a familiar shadow against the dim light.

We arrived that night between seven and nine. As I stepped through the door, I caught a glimpse of that same silhouette in the parlor, moving back and forth with the slow, deliberate rhythm my aunt had always had. My cousin said she’d be downstairs and told us to get ready for bed. My sister and I went up to change, chatting quietly to mask our unease. When we looked down from the landing, my cousin was still in the bathroom, the light spilling under the door.

I went back to the parlor. The rocking chair was empty but gently swaying, as if someone had just risen from it. The air was cold, and the floorboards creaked in a pattern I recognized from my aunt’s pacing. I called out softly, ‘Grandma?’ The swaying stopped.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the house settle. Around 2 AM, I heard the creak of the rocking chair downstairs, slow and rhythmic. I crept to the top of the stairs and peered down. In the moonlight, the chair was rocking by itself, the back-and-forth motion steady, almost hypnotic. On the floor beside it, I saw her knitting needles, left as if she had just set them down. But she was gone.

The next morning, my cousin found me asleep in the parlor, curled up in the rocking chair. She said nothing, but her face was pale. At the funeral, I kept looking at the coffin, half expecting her to sit up. During the burial, a cold wind swept through, and I swore I heard the slow creak of the rocking chair behind us. When I turned, no one was there.

We left Millbrook the next day. As we drove away, I looked back at the house. In the parlor window, I saw a figure—her figure—rocking, as if waiting for us to come back. I didn’t sleep for a week. And every night since, I hear the faint creak of a rocking chair, even when I’m miles away, in my own silent room.