It's Too Enormous

It was just too enormous a task no matter how you look at it. And it's a lesson to be learned. I spent a couple weekends early this month going through what was left of my parents house. I say left because my oldest sister took many things we'd specifically asked her to leave that belonged to all of us; namly family pictures, slides and documents. I wouldn't say I'm angry with her. For me to be angry would mean that I'd thought she was capable of better. I fully expected her to do worse than she did. I would not have been surprised if she'd dragged everything in the house out onto the back lawn and set fire to it. Many of the documents and photos we found we found because she simply missed them. There was just so much. Imagine what a family of six would accumulate - if no one every threw anything out - over the course of fifty years. That's about how long the house has been in our family, since it was built in 1954. There were boxes of stuff and we had to look through every box to be sure we weren't tossing anything important or wanted or needed.

It was exhausting and draining and mind numbing and heartbreaking. I think I came home with about eight boxes of things. Mind you all things I couldn't stand to see left behind. And there is still a large piece of furniture sitting in my friends house in Woodland Hills that I need to find a way to get home to me here. I couldn't stand to see that secretary go to a stranger, or get lost to time or worse dumpstered. So I took it, and I will find a way to get it up here.

I brought home old everyday china we used to use growing up that my mother never threw out. Thank the Gods she didn't throw it out. They are of course classic vintage patterns now. But it's more than that. It's a visceral connection that I have to this china. The touch, the colors, the feel is something rooted so deep in my soul. It was like coming home to touch them again. I hadn't held any of it in probably twenty or thirty years, but my body instantly remembered the feel and the weight and the colors. It would have been like abandoning a part of me to leave it behind.

And my grandfathers books. I took all of his books that were there; all his old books with the yellowing pages and the old spines and the lovely old book smells. Many of them have either my father or my grandfathers names written into the front cover. They're like an anchor of sorts, a connection so deep as to be almost unfathomable. We share that literature, those stories, the love of good books and storytellers and words and rhyme. The line is unbroken from grandfather to son to daughter. There is something shared by all three of us, some quirk of DNA or maybe just upbringing that makes us gravitate towards lovely lovely books with hard spines and words on pages.

I took many of my father's books as well. The collection was so vast though, and many of them were beyond me. I only understand so much about astronomy and there were too many technical books that I will never grasp. He and I always approached the night sky differently. He saw "The Winter Sky" and the stars in their place and which ones were visible and which would need a telescope and he knew where to find what he was looking for, where to look past the horrizon. While I would lay there and just marvel at them. It's always been one of the reasons I live up here, so I can see them all. No one in L.A. sees stars anymore; at least not in the sky. They see one or two and call themselves lucky. I see billions every night and am overwhelmed by the enormity and depth of the sky beyond our planet.

And I took what slides of my father's we could find, and his slide viewers. There is lesson in photograph there. Take more pictures of people. Twenty years from now no one will care what kind of roses you grew in the back yard, or how well your orchids bloomed in 1967. But they will want to see photos of grandmother and grandfather and the kids with the new puppy. Still the images of us he did capture made up for alot. I had forgotten so many things I saw in those slides. I'd forgotten about the old white station wagon, and the summer he put the first pool up, and those hedious matching sailor outfits, and how much he loved my mother. There were so many pictures he took of just her. I don't think she knew how often he captured her, how often he aimed for her and her alone, taking the picture just becuase she stood there. I truely hope at some point she understood how much he loved her. It would kill me to think she never understood or indulged it or even realized it. I doubt she returned the love. I wonder if she ever even understood what love is. But I hope she realized how much he loved her even if she couldn't return it. How hopeless a wish is that? Still I cling to it because I can't bare to think she was that oblivious. His love was there, all over those slides, screaming from them. What a wonderful quiet man he was.

So with the help of a few friends my sister and I went through it all and decided what to take and what to leave behind. It was daunting and traumatizing and gut wrenching. It still is. By now it is all gone. The Salvation Army came and took the furniture none of us wanted, and the knick knacks and the books. And what they didn't take the contractor dumpstered. And he has begun working on the house. And soon he will be done. And soon it will go on the market to be sold to strangers. And it will be gone from my life forever, never to touch or stand in again and I don't know how that will feel. I know it's not normal in this day and age for people to keep a house for fifty plus years, let alone grow up in the one same house. How does it feel to drive past a home you grew up in and know you're not welcome in it, that it belongs to strangers? I don't know, it's never happened to me. I don't think I could. I will go and see it one last time when he'd done renovating it. I want to see it happy again and repaired and beautiful. That is what this has all been about after all. But I will never willingly drive by it again. I don't think. I don't think I could stand it. Better it live in memory and go on from this point to be someone elses home. Bless and keep another family my friend.