Life's exigencies have a way of interrupting our grieving and maybe that's for the better.
The day after my mom died I found myself needing to make a plan for clearing out the room that had been hers at Sunrise of Gahanna (See previous post).
The day after my mom died I found myself needing to make a plan for clearing out the room that had been hers at Sunrise of Gahanna (See previous post).
During my mom's final days the fact that her furniture, clothes, pictures, and other possessions would soon have to be dealt with might have crossed my mind a time or two; but only briefly and in the abstract. Now the abstract had become concrete.
How my mom's things would eventually be dispensed or disposed of would, I decided, be a plan for another day. What I needed at the moment was a plan for getting those things out of Sunrise and, for want of a better immediate storage venue, into my living room.
My mate Tom and I brainstormed on a course of action and found ourselves engaging in what I'd call A Liszkay Thing: How would we do the move? Well, we could maybe borrow the neighbor's pick-up truck and then get our son Tommy and nephew Randy to help us move and load the furniture into the truck...except that the neighbor's pick-up truck was a polished, pristine, finely detailed vehicle that's used for transporting the neighbor's bicycles for bike hikes and trips and so mayhaps asking to borrow it to haul furniture might not, we decided, be the most neighborly move.
On the other hand, if we brought our station wagon and the boys brought their cars we could, within several trips, probably load everything into our combined vehicles, except for the motorized lounge chair, which we could maybe fit into the station wagon if we could take it apart, which might be tricky, so instead of using our cars maybe we should rent a truck? Or a pick-up truck - do they rent out pick-up trucks? - and then Tommy and Randy could help us with the packing and loading, but then we'd been told that only two people would be allowed inside Sunrise to do the moving because of COVID, and, speaking of COVID, should we really even be asking our young relatives to venture out to help us at all?
We even batted about - very briefly - the idea of asking Sunrise if they'd maybe like to just keep all my mom's things for the next resident, who - who knows? - might like using my mom's furniture, wearing her clothes, sleeping on her bed sheets and looking at the pictures of her family hanging on the wall?
While Tom and I were going back and forth my daughter Claire called. "Why don't you just hire a small moving company to take care of this for you?" she said. "Have them pack everything up for you, move all the furniture, do it all from start to finish."
In my daughter's words I swear I heard the Hallelujah Chorus. I wondered why Tom and I never thought of calling a moving company? But of course calling a moving company when you've got perfectly good relatives isn't A Liszkay Thing. (Though I swear that for this branch of the family tree it will be in the future).
And so I called Two Men and a Truck on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and they said they could do the job on Friday.
It took the two young men with the truck three hours to neatly pack up my mom's belongings and deliver them to my living room,
How my mom's things would eventually be dispensed or disposed of would, I decided, be a plan for another day. What I needed at the moment was a plan for getting those things out of Sunrise and, for want of a better immediate storage venue, into my living room.
My mate Tom and I brainstormed on a course of action and found ourselves engaging in what I'd call A Liszkay Thing: How would we do the move? Well, we could maybe borrow the neighbor's pick-up truck and then get our son Tommy and nephew Randy to help us move and load the furniture into the truck...except that the neighbor's pick-up truck was a polished, pristine, finely detailed vehicle that's used for transporting the neighbor's bicycles for bike hikes and trips and so mayhaps asking to borrow it to haul furniture might not, we decided, be the most neighborly move.
On the other hand, if we brought our station wagon and the boys brought their cars we could, within several trips, probably load everything into our combined vehicles, except for the motorized lounge chair, which we could maybe fit into the station wagon if we could take it apart, which might be tricky, so instead of using our cars maybe we should rent a truck? Or a pick-up truck - do they rent out pick-up trucks? - and then Tommy and Randy could help us with the packing and loading, but then we'd been told that only two people would be allowed inside Sunrise to do the moving because of COVID, and, speaking of COVID, should we really even be asking our young relatives to venture out to help us at all?
We even batted about - very briefly - the idea of asking Sunrise if they'd maybe like to just keep all my mom's things for the next resident, who - who knows? - might like using my mom's furniture, wearing her clothes, sleeping on her bed sheets and looking at the pictures of her family hanging on the wall?
While Tom and I were going back and forth my daughter Claire called. "Why don't you just hire a small moving company to take care of this for you?" she said. "Have them pack everything up for you, move all the furniture, do it all from start to finish."
In my daughter's words I swear I heard the Hallelujah Chorus. I wondered why Tom and I never thought of calling a moving company? But of course calling a moving company when you've got perfectly good relatives isn't A Liszkay Thing. (Though I swear that for this branch of the family tree it will be in the future).
And so I called Two Men and a Truck on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and they said they could do the job on Friday.
It took the two young men with the truck three hours to neatly pack up my mom's belongings and deliver them to my living room,
...except for the gargantuan motorized lounger, which I decided could take up residence for now in our family room.
And then began my end of the job.
As it turned out Tommy and Emily were - to my great relief and gratitude - agreeable to coming over on Saturday and taking the furniture from my living room, which they did,
As it turned out Tommy and Emily were - to my great relief and gratitude - agreeable to coming over on Saturday and taking the furniture from my living room, which they did,
...with a little help from our station wagon.
However it meant that in preparation I needed to spend the remainder of that Black Friday emptying the drawers full of my mother's things.
Her things seemed like her,
Her things seemed like her,
...and smelled like her,
...and reminded me of her.
By Friday night my mom was all around my living room,
...and she was even more so by Saturday afternoon after the furniture was gone and I opened the boxes.
The boxes were filled mostly with her clothes,
...which my daughter Theresa helped me move from the boxes to bags.
We could see my mom again in the clothes we remembered her wearing.
"Remember this one?" we'd say.
"Remember this one?" we'd say.
"Or what about this one?"
"Oh, this one is her for sure."
"And remember how beautiful she looked in these?"
We found her purse,
...inside of which was her wallet,
...a few pairs of rosary beads, and an old, stained picture of Aunt Mary, mom's younger disabled sister who lived with us when I was growing up (See posts from May 30 and June 2, 2014: "Fly Homeward, Little Bird."
Inside my mom's wallet were two dollar bills and a receipt from Pizza King, my mom's go-to eatery back in Seaford for Sunday morning brunch with her church friends.
In the pocket of one of her sweaters I found a tiny ceramic baby Jesus.
By Sunday everything was bagged,
...and on Monday we left the remainder of my mother's earthly things at Goodwill.
Maybe soon someone else will be beautiful in her clothes.
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