Recently Roger, a man I'd only known a short time, told me his father had passed away and he needed to go through his father's things and empty the house so he could sell it. He'd been living in a different state and hadn't seen his father in years, his mother had died years ago and he was an only child, the last of the family. He had no one to help him.
I told him I'd be happy to help him sort through his father's things and pack up the photos and important keepsakes. I had no idea what I was getting into.
When we arrived at the house and opened the door we were horrified. Unknown to Roger, his father had been a hoarder. There was twenty years of unopened mail piled in closets. The man had bought hundreds of odd things he'd seen advertised on TV programs. He'd bought dozens of sets of china, copper cookware, seventy bird feeders, thirty "Beauty and the Beast" music boxes, over a thousand music CDs. All these things had been shipped to him but the boxes had never been opened. He had fifty boxes of beautiful, expensive Christmas ornaments that had never been used or even looked at. It was tragic. Roger was shocked, he had no idea his father was a hoarder or that he'd bought thousands of things, spending thousands of dollars, and never opened any of the packages. Every room was floor to ceiling of unopened packages.
I found a box that had forty watches and several medals Roger's father had received from the Korean War. Roger didn't know his father had been in the Army or fought in a war or won medals.
It was sad, the son and father had never really known each other and now it was too late.
There were two hundred new jigsaw puzzles, the boxes had never been opened, the puzzles never worked. I called a nursing home and asked them if they would like some new jigsaw puzzles for their patients and they said they'd be happy to have them. When we delivered them, they hadn't expected two hundred puzzles or fifty boxes of Christmas ornaments.
We spent two days going through the house and barely scratched the surface. There were seventy cases of canned goods that had expired in 1967. The old man had been hoarding food to prepare for the end of the world.
"I can't do this anymore....it would take a year to go through all of this. I can't let him steal my time. I can't be sucked into his illness," Roger said. We locked the door and walked away. Roger called a company to come in and remove everything and haul it to the city dump. It cost him three thousand dollars. The house was sold and was bulldozed down to make room for a new house. Roger took the money from the property and bought a new house, he's getting married in June.
I didn't know the father, I barely knew the son, but I felt sad. I don't know why the father and son had been estranged for thirty years. It was none of my business.
A few months ago Jane asked me to write an obituary for her mother, Mary who had died. I knew Mary very well and as I helped Jane with the obituary I mentioned how her parents had met, eloped on the last two dollars they had, and how for sixty-five years Mary had always kissed her husband at the breakfast table before she poured his coffee.
I knew where Mary had gone to school, that when she was a little girl, she had a collie named Ralph. When she was fifteen she had saved a nine-year old boy from drowning and received a medal from the mayor. I knew dozens of stories about Jane's mother that she didn't know. I was surprised that I knew more about Jane's mother than she did even though she'd visited her mother every other Sunday for years.
I asked her what she and her mother had talked about and she said she couldn't remember, it was about TV programs, shopping, other people they knew, what they'd had for lunch, they had never talked about the past.
I told Jane I knew hundreds of good, happy memories I'd be happy to share with her and to just call me.
Jane never called. Maybe the memories would have made her sad, or maybe she was sorry she and her mother had never talked about really important things.
When you talk to your family, children and friends, tell them something about yourself. It can be small, the name of your first pet, the name of your childhood sweetheart, your favorite book, your favorite kind of pie. It doesn't have to be anything big or important, but just let them know you a little better and ask them what their favorite childhood memory is, their favorite food, when they were eight years old what did they want to be when they grew up? Little thing that makes them who they are.
After we're gone, they can say, "I remember my mother saying when she was a little girl she had a yellow cat named Rosie and her favorite dessert was strawberry ice cream with broken potato chips sprinkled on it."
It's the small things that make us important, unique and unforgettable. Every time you talk to someone, leave a memory with them and take one of their memories away with you.
Let's talk...and get to know one another.
Crying Wind is the
author of Crying Wind,
My Searching Heart, When the Stars Danced, Thunder in Our Hearts, Lightning in Our Veins and Stars in the Desert. See our online shop to order.
