Caregiving Journal 29-Aftermath III

This is not a picture of the room in my Mom's house, but it was just like this--no blue stuffed bunny, though.

It was bound to happen.  Something was going to appear that was going to force me to write a post.  I’ve wanted to for days, but this is the first day I’ve actually had some time to do it, and today this appeared in the USA Today column written by one of my favorite essay writers, Craig Wilson:

Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life,

Where, in spite of all you can do,

There is no way out, there is no way back

There is no other way but through?

                                                            Annie Johnson

And this is the Red Sea place in my life.  The house.  Cleaning the house.  Helping the house become a place that others might want.  Taking all of my family out of the house, all of the artists and their artwork and their materials and their hundreds of pieces of art paper and canvases and found objects and tools and books, the upholsterer and his fabrics and his tacks and his springs and his wine –making bottles, the brother who saved every paper bag, the mother who saved all her People magazines and every book she ever read, the brother that never threw anything away, including every single piece of plastic that every model part was attached to, and every bit of clothing he ever owned from the time he was 20 and worked out for 6 hours every day to the present day when a workout is climbing the stairs to his room.  The house.  This will be “the year of the house”.

And indeed it is like parting the Red Sea.  I thought the basement was hard to muck out and it was.  But the third floor is harder.  Just when I seem to be making a path down the middle of the ocean of stuff, I find more things that have been thrown back into a tiny closet.  I don’t find treasures; I find more old clothes, my hiking brother’s old tent, some dishes, one shoe, more of Dad’s slides.  The slides might be treasures, I haven’t had time to look at them yet or even to read the labels he put on the cartridges they are stored in.  I was hoping I might find the old file box I kept my junior high notes in.  I’m referring to the notes my friends and I handed back and forth to each other during the school day; it would be like texting is now.   “Did you see who was holding hands in the hall?”  “No, who?”  “I can’t believe it!  I thought they broke up!”  “Are you going to the Tolo?”  “No, I can’t think of anybody to ask?”  Stuff like that.  But they would be so much fun to find. 

Yesterday I did find one pencil sketch I was looking for.  It was an 11 X 14 drawing that my mother did of my grandmother as a very young woman She had it matted and framed but it had disappeared.  I found it in a plastic bag with the original of a beautiful photograph of my own mother at about the age of 20.  The photo is damaged, but savable.  My theory is that when my Mom had her house fire, in 2003, and everything in the house was packed up and put in storage, the box these pictures were in was returned to my brother’s area by mistake.  The pictures were in the back of a tiny closet with things that belonged to both of my brothers.  Again, this affirms why I didn’t have some cleaning company come in to do the cleanup work, even though my body aches from my eye sockets to my ankles. 

I guess I am making progress.  The basement is done, except that the pool table is still in it.  My San Diego daughter wants it and is trying to figure out how to deal with it.  Mom’s bedroom is done but the bed and one dresser are still there—my brother is sleeping there now.  The living/dining room is clear of most of it’s furniture.  Two chairs, a spinet piano, TV and coffee table and small bookcase are still there for my brother.  All the books are gone.  The front bedroom upstairs is clean of the clothes that were piled in it, but there is still an old loveseat, a chair, a coffee table and some paintings.  The furniture is from my first marriage, circa 1968.  I can see the original wood floor now.  The windows still have my brother’s paint on them, something about “this flag doesn’t bleed” and Harley Davidson stickers.

The room I’m working on now has a twin bed in it and probably 30 of my brother’s paintings, some of them very large.  We have removed several big garbage bags of junk, and I do mean junk, as in broken ghetto blasters or boom boxes as we later decided to call them, remains of airplane models,  men’s clothes,  shattered glass, a television set, plaster board.  There were old records that went to the Goodwill, books of music (Goodwill), books like Moby Dick in paperback (Goodwill), a small box of toys that my Mom had collected for her grandchildren (Goodwill).  What remains are the large things I can’t move without help—a TV console, the bed, the plasterboard and all the paintings.  My husband is so burnt out by all the junk we keep finding that he starts to get grumpy before we even leave our place to go down to Mom’s house.  All he is willing to do now is cart the bags out, move the heavy stuff and take things to the dump, which is a huge help.  He will not do any active cleaning or sorting.  I am thinking of calling in the cavalry, better known as alumni friends, to help with the rest of it, just to keep peace at my own house.

I have been picking away at the kitchen, which is the easiest room.  Most of the pots and pans will go to Goodwill, with the rest going with my brother when we figure out where he’s going.  The bathroom will be the same.

The last room to be cleaned out will be my brother’s room.  Have you seen the reality show about hoarders?  His room is like that, though the height of the junk is not quite as horrible as I’ve seen on that program.  There still is no floor showing—when he cleans a portion of it, you can’t really tell.  He will need me to go in and say, “Are you keeping this?”  I’m afraid he will keep way more than he will be able to fit into the small apartment he will probably end up in.  His new place will end up just like his room is now and like the part of the living room he is occupying now.  It is becoming exactly as I thought it would—littered with magazines, coffee mugs, old prescription pill containers, cereal bowls full of cigarette butts, TV guides, empty latte containers.

So, you see, the Red Sea is not only the house—it is also moving my brother, literally and figuratively.  He is content where he is.  His cat is with him, the detritus of his life is around him.  But I must and will move through it and move him.  Today I savor a day at home, even though I have housework to do, plants to put into the ground, a job I have to help my husband with.  I have a rare moment to breath, to rest my ankles from the steep stairs and my hands from picking up and carrying garbage.  A breath in, a breath out.