Airport lonely

   There is lonely and then there is airport lonely.
   Saturday I returned Ben and Caroline’s car to them via one straight nine-hour drive to Indiana. (The car had an accident in Little Rock the night of Michael’s memorial; it spent more than a week in a body shop here.)
   Indiana 69 was about 90 miles of blazing hardwood forest, humps of color on rolling hills. And the visit was fun. The older granddaughter made me hop 2 miles up and down the hallway, according to Fitbit.
   Sunday I flew home. It was an uneventful flight, except for an exchange with my silent seatmate as the plane crossed over Granite Mountain near Little Rock. I had imagined it was the size of a mall, but it went on and on until I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. So I asked this silent, coughing man what it was, and he said, Granite Mountain. I said Wow. And he said Yeah. I asked, that’s nepheline syenite? He said, I don’t know what that is. A feldspar, I said. Oh, he said.
   Then came the mourning moment. As I hurried along the airport past the gates, headed for the exit, I realized Michael was not waiting out there.

   And it was the first time in my adult life I had walked that airport without finding him at the end, waiting for me with a hug.

Mowing the lawn

   While I was mowing the lawn at my Mom's former home today, it struck me how easy it was to do. And yet, over the past two months, Michael dreaded being asked to do it. Dreaded it.
   Also, I remembered how he would call me at work to report all his lawn-mowing. In the past two months, he called several times in a row every afternoon. Usually he would report that he had mowed some section of our lawn. Usually, I was slamming my head against a deadline and had to apologize that I couldn't talk.
   I did feel bad about continually rebuffing his calls, but also I felt annoyed. 
   I forgive myself for that. 
   If he had said to me, “Something is wrong with my heart and I am scared,” not only would I have stopped what I was doing, I would have rushed home to be with him.

   Maybe he didn’t know he was worried.
   Maybe he wasn’t worried.

   Throughout the last year, his final year, if I sent him a text, he would immediately call to repeat to me the information I had just texted him. Every time.
   He must have been worried. 

   I was a little worried. He was puffing through his lips for no good reason, as he did 20 years ago before the bypass surgery. 
   I was trying not to worry about that.

The Widow Hood

    Several things are happening:

   • Sunday while Song and I were dismantling Michael’s cubicle at work, creatures of the type not covered by my homeowner’s policy held WWF auditions atop some fragile drywall between the attic and the landing where the washing machine sits. I came home to find washer, landing and stairwell full of blown-in insulation and rat poo. 

   I have a call in to a well recommended contractor, but in the meantime am not turning on the heating because there also is a creature hole on the corner of the roof outside. It’s unusually cold for October — we’re having one of those Arkansas Octobers, which might as well be Arkansas Decembers or Arkansas Mays or Arkansas Februaries ... any month might happen at any time here. It’s cold enough that creatures will be looking for warm cubbies to move into, and I don’t want to make the attic any more enticing than it already obviously is. Let it remain a cold place until a contractor closes up the hole and repairs the ceiling.

   The cats have been huddled, miserable, in their plush beds. That is, they are using for the first time ever the plush bends Michael bought them.

   This evening I brought my studio space heater upstairs to take the edge off the 58-degree den, and everything eased just enough that love and peace reigned for an hour. Ollie and I curled up to eat soba noodles and watch Grey’s Anatomy in standard definition.

   But then the space heater tripped a breaker. 

   Back we are in the icebox.

   • Standard definition is the new rule on the TV here. Now that Michael isn’t watching our TV, my dear daughter-in-law has figured out how to make AT&T sell me fewer and less fabulous TV channels so I can pay less not to watch TV. 

   Michael and I talked about doing that while he was alive (oh! what a painful turn of phrase, “while he was alive”!), because we were wasting money paying for top-level options we neither wanted nor used. But change is a hassle. He preferred to let things ride, even though it made sense to be more conservative with our disposable income since he was made part-time last year.
   But I should talk. I have been paying $5.38 a day for coffee I could be making at work. That has to change.

   The basic option Caro and I selected includes some HD channels, but only shopping outlets. How mean is that, AT&T? The local channels (which I might watch) are all in standard definition. But standard def looks pretty good when you don’t compare it to HD. I will probably miss the heck out of AMC and HBO, but now I have an incentive to use Michael’s Netflix subscription and stream Amazon Prime.

   • The coroner signed the death certificate in time for the memorial, so the cremains were ready for us. But the sexton at Mount Holly and his assistants were all unavailable last week while the family was gathered. So I have Michael’s cremains tucked into a niche here at home. 

   I thought it would make me insane with grief having them in the house, but compared with the mess on the landing, they are easy to live with. 
   And this delay gives me time to make a ceramic box for them. I am going to make a noble porcelain box, carved all over with cats and fired in soda. 

   Then we will put it into the ground and never look at it again.

   But I will know it is down there, being pretty in the dark.

Let it go

   One by one, the kindly experts tell me to let it go. 
   Don’t try to repair Mom’s house. Don’t try to fix the damage done by the family that lived in it for more than 40 years. Do not spend any money. No money. Do not spend any more time. No more time. Find somebody willing to take it, and if necessary, pay him to take it — all, do not differentiate — so you can move on. 
   Then move on.

   I do not want to move on.
   I want to fix it.
   I want to go back in time, to the time when I didn’t want to live there. I want to want to live there. For Mom’s sake. For the sake of us. To make it better. Cleaner. Less stinky. No longer broken. No longer built in a hurry — I want to rebuild it the way we deserve it to have been built.
    I want to go home again, and I want my mom and dad to be there. Only this time, I want to be there, too.

In praise of togetherness

   For the past 4 or 5 months, every weekend I’ve spent at least one day, 4 to 8 hours, at Mom's house, throwing out the past. Some weekends, I do skip. But I do something else toward the estate settling, so I tell myself that’s OK. I’m not failing.
   Now the floors downstairs are clear and the house smells better. But still there is more debris.
   And as you can imagine — and might know from experience — it’s heartwrenching work.
   Saturday, Michael happened to call while I was in the middle of Mom’s yearbook from her sophomore year: I bawled all over him. Which I try not to do, because it gets old.
   Also, he had already been there, first thing in the morning, shearing the front yard with his hedge trimmer. He had already done his bit for the weekend — and the week, because as has lately on Thursdays, he moved the garbage cans back from the street so I don’t have to drive over again. (I put them out on Tuesday night.)
   His reaction was just like Michael: “What can I do to help?” while yawning. After we hung up, it hit me that it WAS time to ask for help. Working alone is too upsetting and the mess — finite, it is finite — was overwhelming.
   I texted my buddy who a few years back cleared a hoard out of her mother's house and enjoyed it so much she has helped other friends with their mothers’ houses. She likes turning mess into order; she likes shopping at estate sales, and she loves categorizing things — she’s an archivist.
   It is time to get help. She'll start working with me Thursday.
   This is just friendship. Friendship.
   ALSO, I asked, and this morning Fiona skipped church so she, Michael and I could work together.
   WORKING TOGETHER IS GREAT. It was a relief to have her making the decisions about what to keep and what to toss from the heap of Talen’s and Song’s childhood things ... peed upon by cats for years.
   We emptied both of the attics — except for Dad’s big desk in the garage attic, which I want to ask Joe and Talen to bring down next time Joe’s in town with Nikki. Hopefully, he remembers how to assemble that desk, so we can sell it.
   Fiona and I made real headway in the blue bedroom, which seems to have been one big litter box for the cats.
   We made progress. Doesn’t look like it, but we did. Half of a Bagster is full.
   Meanwhile, Michael went through every page of the ancient tax returns from the attic, and sorted out pages that he will burn later.
   We found Talen or Song’s boom box, and it works. We listened to Ted Talks.
   We found a pretty tile Nikki made for Mom years ago.
   We found Dad’s uniforms, and they smell OK. We found a big framed photo of one of his ships — the Pocono? the Little Rock?
   We still haven't found his fancy-dress sword, but we have a plan to work together again next weekend.

Landscape is soulscape

   


   
Today I began cleaning another room in what used to be my mom's house. 

AFTER

   So far, I've cleared and cleaned the front hallway, the downstairs and upstairs bathrooms (with repairs), the kitchen (with repairs), the eating area, the back porch, parts of the front porch, the crawlspace and some of the yard. 
   The floors are not spotless, because the vinyl is stained, but they are no longer filmed with black hairs, grime and silt. The silt is gone, and with it much of the cat funk.
   This new room is a step back to square one. Back into the landfill. It's awful. 
   Again and again, I pick up what seem to have been perfectly serviceable things, relatively new, that have been ruined by cat pee, insects, disregard. Once-good clothes. Heaps of them. Worthless. 
   Cat smell doesn't come out of clothing unless it's treated and washed. Most of the items are used underwear or stained shirts and wouldn't have been donation-worthy even were they clean. But also there are jackets and pants that would probably come through a drycleaning looking nearly new. But it would take drycleaning — they aren't clothing you could soak in oxidizing something or other and scrub at the stains one at a time and then run through a washing machine five times to get out the animal smell. That would be a noble effort — spending time and money to make them nice and then tossing them into a donation box. But it would devour even more of my life than this project already has, and it would be a misapplication of the trust's money. Some of the siblings need to inherit as much as they can inherit.

   There is too much of this ruined clothing. 
   And I regret the bulk I'm sending to the landfill. But it would be worse to try to donate things that have been walked on and peed upon for years. 
   Making the decision to toss the stuff out used to give me a grim sense of superiority — “Look what these fools have made me do” — but I'm over that. There are layers in this debris field, evidence of a cycle that is sorrowful. 
  • There was a need born of hope, and energy, and it led to purchases. 
  • But then the hope failed, the energy died. 
  • Depression and a sense of purposeless futility descended. 
  • The things drifted to the floor. The cats marauded over them. 
   Dirt settled — until another bout of hope attacked, bringing more purchases.

   What I'm looking at is depression. Its effects and aftereffects.

   On the other hand, I'm invigorated by the awfulness of the mess.
   This I did not expect. 
   The room's disgusting ... I should be sick. And upset. It smells bad! 
   But instead I know the mess is finite. And it can be relocated. 

   And I feel so fortunate. My life has only had ups and downs; it has not ever included a spiral into Dis. My life has been so easy. I mean, look at this sweet man! Look what he is doing. He does it a lot. Our house is overcrowded, messier than ever and jammed with stuff, and yet he doesn't stop trying.


   Also, I am no longer able to imagine that I am not complicit in the burgeoning Mount Trash I never stop being astonished to see looming in the distance as I drive along 107. I'm adding to that sorry mountain. That is my mountain of decisions.
   
   This afternoon, driving home from the house, as usual I passed the chainstore node. For three years, on my way home from visits to the nursing home, I would swing in there for what even I realized was retail therapy. Many sweaters and youthful blouses hanging in my closet were purchased after I raced weeping away from my sweet mother and the problem of the fact that she was still overjoyed by life in that unfair unjust undeserved predicament that was inexorably rotting her body.
   I realized today as I motored past without stopping that I haven't stopped, not even once, in these months of cleaning at Mom's. 
   I don't want therapy. I have it.

Less than less

   I am holding Mom’s black purse, feeling through a tear in the crumb-dusted lining seams for what might be a coin but isn’t. Her wallet and checkbook aren’t in here and haven’t been for three years. Long before she died, most of the necessary tools she hauled around for a decade or more in this stylish but serviceable bag were replaced by tissues, old lipstick, hearing aid batteries.

   I remember talking about purses with her, while we were shopping. They needed compartments, she said. They should have zippers.

   What is to be done with this black bag?

   When I steeled myself to tackle the filth and clutter in Mom’s house, I moved into the work while sternly ordering myself to stop wasting energy blaming my sister, her husband and daughter for living in it for decades, heaping it into a kind of baroque installation, a living artwork about sloth. They had gone out of their way to bring in more and more cats, from four to eight cats at a time and sometimes unhealthy, which worsened the mess. 

   Cats I love, but they are machines that generate urine and feces. To own a cat is to own responsibility for its detritus. And they do amuse themselves by dashing anything that can move off any high place they can reach, poking that thing to the floor. And then they must bat it under shelving units, they must. You must know this and accept the chores that come with it. You cannot throw up your hands and say, “They did that,” without bending down to get the thing back up off the floor.

   Every place my sister lives winds up looking the way Mom’s house looks — hallways blocked by broken devices and abandoned projects, forgotten enthusiasms, a forest of furniture, trashed books, multiplicities of plastic bottles and toilet paper tubes that no one may remove because they are “recycling,” shredders, broken shredders, advertisements for shredders ... 

   Clotted around the stuff like so much peanut butter in hair will be cat litter — in this case it was wood chip mulch — layered with envelopes, bills, tax returns, silverfish, unspooling thread, clothes, clothes, clothes ... Always, there are books about clearing away clutter.

   An open doorway — she took doors off hinges — is like a window into a thicket of metal and wooden chair legs. 

   The floors in every room are coated in a thick layer of silt and hair stuck to islands of dried syrup.

   In the upstairs bathroom between the toilet and the wall I used a garden hoe to un-fuse a rotten facecloth from a kind of molasses of filth hardened around it. It peeled away dangerously but came off all in a piece, a black lace, a widow’s net for her funeral hat.

   So it had been there a while. And so had the diapers in the garbage bag hanging off the doorknob by yellow drawstrings.

   The silt bothered me because it testified that no one swept up anything, ever. Two vacuum cleaners, three brooms, and no one swept anything, ever.

   And yet all of that was OK and I could let go my self-righteous repugnance and stop wasting time on blame. Let it go: That sort of thought is rooted in fear anyway, fear that the task is too much, that we will fail. Anything made by people will be finite, I told myself. Nothing lasts forever, not even mess.

   But then came experiences I wasn’t prepared for:

   Item by item, I would find an old friend, a thing remembered from my childhood. These things had a magical quality once: new, cunning, special.

  But the thing in my hand is not that. It is tatty, gross, broken — worthless. 

Dad brought this back from
Greece. Although it can be stacked
so it looks whole, it is trash
now. I could repair it, but
there are chips missing inside,
 and anyway,

   I hold this worthless thing and I am a little girl, playing alone for hours with the contents of a mid-century modern secretary/shelving unit, loving the quiet snick of magnets as the doors open or close. I like the glowing grain of the wood; I like the aroma of furniture wax. I spend hours reorganizing the contents of cubbies: a ship in a bottle; a fat straw lion, from Africa, maybe; stacks of wooden picnic plates. 


   Especially I like some little boxes that live inside the cabinet and never come out to be used. These are papery cardboard boxes, not bigger than 4 or 5 inches each and each containing its own “hurricane lantern” — a two-part assembly with a metal base of unusual color and a glass bell shaped like a tulip. The colors differ from box to box; and I do not know what a hurricane is.

   The hurricane lanterns turned out to be like the tunafish that came in a can. I remember in both cases the days I learned that tuna was a fish! and a hurricane was a storm! But fish have nothing to do with cans, how could that be? And the little hurricane lanterns made even less sense, because they were so light a cat might dash them off a table. What use would they be in a storm?

   They remind me of my home, clean and yet constantly being cleaned by children marshaled into work details by parents who must have been paragons of energy.

   But now I am the adult making executive decisions, one after another, and these once magical things are dented, chipped, frayed, threadbare, sticky, broken: worth less than less. 

   Junk. 

   One of my college English teachers, Eileen Gregory, told me that we should thank god for disillusion. People destroy themselves over illusions.

   But what will happen to the wonder that was the world after I throw its ruins away? 

   I hold my mama’s black purse.

   I am Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull.

   I shove it in the garbage bag with the rotten death lace. I pull the yellow drawstrings together. I move on.