| 6/04/2007 |
REMAINS OF THE DAY
|
What a weekend... It's been over a year in planning and I'm glad it's over. I can't guarantee that I'll be brief. This will be somewhat personal and cathartic. Yet, feel free to skip a paragraph now and then.
Over a year ago my Grandparents decided to have a household auction. The reason being my Grandfather's declining health. Would they need to move into a smaller house so he could get around better? Would they need to move him into a nursing home and put all their money into his care? In the end it was decided that their current house was their home and where they were the most comfortable. They would go stir crazy in a small house or apartment. So they would have an auction to reduce how much stuff they had.
My Grandmother began the long process of cleaning out closets and going through dozens of boxes. Their garage had been turned into an office/rec room years ago. Since then, it had collected boxes of belongings... theirs, mine, and others... over the last 80 years. Eighty years of stuff to sort through and decided what needed to be kept and what needed to be sold. She was able to do it as well as take care of my ailing Grandfather.
The week of the sale my Grandfather checks into the hospital complaining of problems breathing, weakness, and disorientation. They kept him for observation for a couple days. (Which, at his age, I take as 'code' for "in case he dies".) Two days before the sale and my Grandfather is in the hospital. My Grandmother was actually relived in a way. As bad as it might sound, he was at least not underfoot while she was preparing for the sale. Though, thankfully he was released last Thursday? I put a question mark behind that last statement because, as mean as it sounds, he would have been better off not being at home during the sale. Like I said, I know it sounds bad, but honestly...
Anyway, the auction was on Saturday. Friday night I arrived to ready boxes to be sold in the morning. That actually went smoother than I thought it would. My Grandmother mentioned there were still two walls (yes, walls) that had boxes stacked up that she hadn't gone through yet. What!? A year later and she is still going through boxes. Oh God... It turns out that she had sorted through them, but didn't recall what was in them. So as stuff was being put outside for the auction she would "look in them real quick" and see if it was something to be saved or sold. My concern was that she would not just "look" through something. That instead she would need to organize and sort through the box itself. Pulling out pieces of things she wanted to save. Stuff that said she'd done already. I was not completely wrong in that thinking.
At 7AM we began setting boxes out for the auctioneer to place where he wanted. With help from a few hired hands we started the three hour process of unpacking dozens of boxes. Kitchen stuff here. Bedding there. Odds and Ends over there. Tools. Toys. Furniture. Outdoor Christmas decorations. Boxes of plastic grave flowers. National Geographics from way before I was born (when they didn't use photos on the covers). And then junk... lots and lots of junk.
I told my Grandmother that she wasn't allowed to buy anything else. Ever. She laughed. I wasn't joking.
Seriously... as my Aunt Jenny and I were unpacking these boxes we'd come across random things that there was no point in selling. A plastic bag of straws? Folders from when I was in grade school that I'd scribbled and colored on? A box of old cell phones? This one actually was kind of funny. I set the bag phone (yes... BAG PHONE) out like a mother sow and lined all the smaller phones up to it like suckling piglets.
My Aunt Jenny wasn't helping too much at times when she would find something in a box and have to show it to me and ask if I remember when we first got it, whatever 'it' may be. Or if I fondly remember some photo that was taken pre-pubescence. Or if I she should put the encyclopedias in alphabetical order. While all possibly valid questions, under a time crunch was not the best time for most of those questions to be asked.
I probably should mention that these type of events bring out the 'worst' in my personality. When I get motivated to do something, I'm like a bulldog. I won't let it go til I'm done with it. Now, the key is getting that motivated to begin with. But that morning, for example, I had the energy and the drive to get that stuff put out there as quick as possible so it would be done and over with. I didn't have the patience to stop and look at a photo of someone when they were still in onesies. At a family reunion, maybe. But not right then, when there was a job to do.
People had been showing up off and on all morning starting to peruse the sale items. Eying certain antiques that they might want to bid on. The sale hadn't even started yet, and I'm pretty sure most of the furniture had at least one person interested in each piece.
I was surprised to see how defensive I became when I overheard someone mention the state and shape of something. "That's an antique!!" I'd say to myself when someone would comment on the shitty quality of something. I had to remind myself, that none of these things were 'personal' to anyone else but us. No one outside the family cared that the bedroom set was what I slept on when I grew up. No one cared that those vases were things that my Grandfather bought my Grandmother as an engagement present over 50 years ago before he went off to World War II. To them it was some knick knack piece of crap that had been sitting in the back of some closet on a shelf through several presidencies.
This sale wasn't just about 'things'. It was my Grandparents making their lives simpler. Less cluttered and cumbersome. It was a sale that otherwise would be happening in the wake of their deaths. They were saving me from having to do it later. After realizing that, I let any emotions attached to the sale itself go pretty quickly.
Physically and emotionally I was drained by 11AM. The sale had started. Everything that was going to be sold was outside. The predicted rain had held off, and the sun was shining. People were buying stuff that I had no idea would even be sold. Granted it was literal handfuls of items for a buck, but still it was sold.
Four hours, two automobiles, five rooms of miscellaneous furniture, and dozens of boxes later the auction was over. People were clearing out, taking their new found 'treasures' to their own basements, garages, and closets. My Grandfathered faired pretty well during the hustle and bustle of the sale. He didn't bark at anyone during an Alzheimer's flare up. My Grandmother seemed relieved. Exhausted mentally and physically as well. And the rain came just as the last pile of bought items was being collected. I'm sure someone with better words than I could make a metaphoric comparison to the rain washing away the collected memories, belongings, and dust of over 80 years of possessions. I am not that man.Labels: family, introspection |
|
I posted this @ 6/04/2007 08:01:00 AM.............Need a link?..........
|
|
|
|
|
|
