OK, I said I’d be back at the end of the week, and here I am. You wonder where my travels took me, I bet. Was it an exotic destination? Sand, surf, and sun perhaps? Nope, it was to the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. Was it at least an enjoyable excursion, a step away from the humdrum of home? Again, nope. The weather was as hot as the Devil’s asscrack and my task once there was just about as enjoyable.
Some of you will be aware that my mother died in February 2022. Since then, my father has been on his own in a house way too big for even two people, and with failing eyesight and no means of independent transportation, so I’ve been making frequent trips up there to help as much as I can. Fortunately, I had sone great help with this from my niece and nephew as well as their father, who stayed close to my parents years and years after divorcing my sister. As of February 2, 2024, those trips became unnecessary, because my father died. It was not a pleasant end, I’m afraid, but it least it was not trauma; for months I’d been very concerned about him navigating his way to the basement down some fairly steep stairs. He beat those stairs, but he couldn’t win against his failing body, I’m afraid. I’ll get further into all this in future chapters, but I wanted to get it out there.
Since my dad’s death, I have been working at clearing out their house. I don’t think they quite met the definition of hoarders, but gottdamn did they keep a lot of shit! I’ve been sorting through two lifetimes worth of stuff, and dumping most of it on the curb the night before trash pickup. Six bags are the limit, so six bags it is. Including the trip up there the week Dad died, I have been unpacking that house on seven trips (at thirty gallons per bag, that’s 1,260 gallons of trash), and it’s difficult for even me to see what progress I’m making. Eventually, I’ll get a dumpster delivered, and I hope to get an estate sale underway at some point, but it seems like I’ll never be finished with the place. I am learning a lot, though: Lots of family history I was either unaware of, or had forgotten, or just never seemed important, the ins and outs of probate, what sells and what doesn’t in estate sales, how empty a house feels when the people who should be there aren’t, and never will be again, and most painfully, once someone is gone, you can’t ask them any more questions. I know that part seems self-evident, but when the recognition of the fact swoops in, it’s a gut punch.
I’ll pick this up again later. For now I have some critters to tend.
