A House for Sale: Well-Used

I wasn't sure what my role was, other than moral support, but I was quickly assigned to the job of emptying the pantry, where I spent an hour or so checking expiration dates on various cans and jars, and sorting items into three piles: still-in-use, food bank donations, or dumpster-bound. Bourbon-flavored barbecue sauce, Betty Crocker frosting, boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese...this was a clear, easy job and I was good at it.

The guys were in the garage, where the lifting was heavier and decisions more complicated: toys and tools, appliances and auto supplies, storage boxes filled with random remnants of a family's life. Caroline found an antique oil can exactly like the one Dorothy used to lubricate the Tin Man's jaw, and the kids flung dozens of trophies into the dumpster––awards for swimming, tennis, basketball––even taking a hammer to one just to let off steam. There were surfboards in the rafters, Christmas decorations, thousands of golf balls in plastic bags...even John's childhood Steiff stuffed tiger, separate from its tail, which turned up later someplace else.

Progress was slow but evident. Closets gradually emptied and rooms began to clear, revealing walls and spaces I'd never even noticed. Each of John's three kids had a colored sticker to label personal possessions, and then they went from area to area deciding on the dispensation of property that was shared. A few vintage heirloom pieces were mixed in with furnishings basic and functional, but agreements were readily reached, and by and large, it was all falling into place. I know John would have been pleased at the absence of bickering, and the way the family had gathered to get the job done with efficiency and camaraderie. It wasn't hard to imagine his booming voice making a wise crack now and then, or a wince-provoking pun. He would have wanted to keep it light-hearted; I'm pretty sure of that.

I tried helping Johnny with his stuff but it didn't go well. Too many emotional connections and decisions there, and I guess I was oblivious to how carefully one should handle a basketball or poster signed by Michael Jordan, or a book by Coach Wooden, or a special framed photo leaning against the wall. Even the way I taped the cardboard box had to be redone. I slipped out the front door and took a walk. No one missed me.

When I returned, Monte had a job just for me: he pointed to the file boxes in the bedroom and asked me to go through John's papers, creating a pile of documents for each kid that was clearly hers or his such as birth certificates and report cards, putting aside house records and legal papers that Monte as executor would still need, and deciding what could probably just be thrown away. What he hadn't factored in were the various little items that did not neatly fit into any of those categories, and in particular a folder labeled keepsakes.

I felt intrusive sitting on the floor of my brother-in-law's bedroom going through that stuff. It just didn't seem to be my proper place, even when Monte insisted that I was right for the job, given my own propensity for keeping such things and thus my understanding of their value. He said I had the proper balance of, on the one hand, sentimentality, and on the other, a degree of emotional detachment and strong desire to get the business part over and shut.

Maybe so. But the file boxes contained a man's life in its paper summation and I approached it with reverence and sadness. The keepsakes folder was brimming with the cards and notes that teachers and coaches receive, all those handwritten expressions of thanks and affection. Ever wonder what happens to those? Well, they are read and cherished and placed in a file box. (I actually knew that already.) There was also a funny little keychain, a marriage certificate of a union that ended, notes to Daddy from his kids. But when I came upon his passport, spankingly new and current and absolutely blank, well, that's when I got choked up.

In a little while the grandparents arrived. I was finished with the files by then, having gotten some help from Monte's sister Jane, and had gone out in the yard where my father-in-law was sitting in a chair by the garage. I looked towards the house and saw my mother-in-law standing in the kitchen, framed by a doorway, her hair white and wavy, her sweater pale blue, with her slender figure and elegant demeanor...breathtaking. I can't explain it, but for a moment she looked utterly translucent in the sunlight, and I had a premonition of her, too, fading away someday, and maybe sooner than I want to imagine. I turned to my father-in-law and said, "You sure do have a beautiful wife."

He agreed, and he looked at her for a long time. "I'm lucky," he said.

I felt a fathomless sense of both presence and loss.

When the beautiful lady stepped outside, she was astonished to see the dumpster in the driveway, heaped to capacity: "I never realized there was that much stuff in this house!"

And then she turned towards the backyard, where she knows the history of every tree. The leafy avocado tree was there when the family first arrived, but she pointed out the lush, lopsided macadamia tree by the fence that she planted many years ago, and the orange tree she'd also put in, never bountiful, but even at this moment bearing fruit. She remarked upon the lack of lawn and landscaping, remembering hopeful beginnings invariably sidetracked by the hectic ongoingness of everything else.

She smiled about the Steiff tiger's reunion with its tail.

It was time to go to dinner and call it a day. I turned back and saw the house, its screen door hanging askew and adorned with red masking tape. As with every house, this one is filled with stories. It is a house in which childhoods were lived and a marriage began, a house where cookies were baked and Thanksgiving dinners were held, where games were watched on a big TV and kids came to hang out and eat pizza, where little girls played with toy ponies and big girls filled folders with meticulous notes for AP classes, where holiday decorations were hung and hair was cut and popcorn was popped and people spoke up in loud voices. It was a house in which a family grew and changed its shape but stayed strong, sealed by great love.

It was the house of a man who never used his passport, but lives on in many hearts.

We did not leave empty-handed. Monte took a few plastic orange safety cones from the garage to have on hand in case of road damage this winter, as well as two heavy iron hooks for hanging bicycles. I rescued a large cake pan and a cookie sheet from the donation pile.

"That's still got life in it," said Jane. "Bake something good."