The Appraisal

Two handful of years ago, my teens and I cracked opened the door to my parents’ house on the hill. Since my parents’ passing, the stately home had been visited only twice a month by Ana, the cleaning person, and of late, the appraisers. Paintings, tall as my petite girl, lined the great room. While high on the walls, the scenes spoke of idyllic locales--a Roman aqueduct, a western stream seeking a cowboy, and a boat anchored off Italy. Dad had boasted about his originals. But the canvas told the real story. The printed version peeked through the brushstrokes. To suggest he’d gotten scammed would have gone over like tofu at a family picnic.

Mom’s treasured crystal, the ones we as children would disobediently touch, were dispersed among various tables. Every cabinet, every shelf, the large breakfront, all had been emptied of their cherished collectibles, awaiting the thumbs up or the thumbs down.

My girls picked through the out-of-place items they’d admired on previous visits. Some of the Easton Press books were missing, they reported. Yet “some of the good presidents” lingered. Their grandmother’s clothes still hung in the closet, and her makeup filled the bathroom drawers. The pantry was emptied of Lorne Doones and cereal--not even salt and pepper left. The frig held a box of baking soda. Grinch had hit the subzero early this year.

Overwhelmed by the intentional chaos, I grabbed some outdoor cushions and headed to the covered porch. Momma hated that word. She preferred “lanai.” I’m not sophisticated. I like a porch, like the ones my grandmothers potted petunias on. 

The fountain, my dad’s triumph over retirement, was wrapped in industrial plastic. I missed the burble of summer water, the birds flitting about, the ones he despised for using his fountain as a bird bath. If he were still here, Dad would have sauntered outside by now, asking me the same questions as always. We’d have veered into politics and God and agreed on the only things we did in life. 

My grandmother’s hydrangea, the one Mom insisted be brought from the old house years ago, bloomed creamy white with a touch of pink. Big and wild in summer, rooted and twigged in the colder months, they kept time, these hydrangea of my grandmother and mother’s, their heartaches and joys, their comings and goings. 

Life had come down to this, U-haul boxes and strapping tape. Had this all really come to an end? Years ago, my mom’s doctors cornered me at the nurses’ station and spoke of cancer snaking her spine, wreathing her pelvis. They alluded to weeks. They didn’t know my mom, or her special weapon we called Twin 1. 

My aunt prayed her sister would live years longer, not the pitiful prayers my sister and I launched and lobbed, asking for a couple of months. No, Auntie G prayed for another seven years of life to be exact. God answered that and more—my mom survived twelve years. Score another for outrageous prayers.

That evening long ago in my parents’ house, clouds slashed the sky. The cows moved and mooed to gather for night. Tucked among the pines, an owl hooted near the Confederate grave six-hundred paces from their bedroom window. Now that the house was going up for sell, I wondered why I had not visited the old site, to honor a life lived, to pay homage to history. Don’t the should-have, would-have, could-haves seem more important when we’ve lost those we know and love most?

I clutched the backs of their dining chairs. Dad sat here; Mom sat there. Until the day Mom got mad, feisty mad. Then she insisted on a space between them. A place for the mail, she said. Thankfully, the disagreement didn’t last long. Even in their last days, and it was literally my dad’s surprising last days, they ended up talking through their matters and coming to a certain peace. Even in their last days together, I watched them repair the broken, demonstrating to me yet again that “Relationship meant jumping into the fray, not avoiding. Trusting, not self-protecting” (Tissue the novel).

Ten years have passed since seeing my dad’s face at his breakfast table: the way he’d start a sentence and take a bite of food in the middle, so I had to wait for the last part of his words after he swallowed. It’s been nine years since the clink of a wine glass alerted me that Mom stooped over the kitchen sink, heaven-bent on doing dishes. Before cancer chained her to a motor scooter, she walked fast, flipflops flipping inside, sneakers outside. How she hated that scooter. How she missed her freedom to move. 

I’m not a crying woman. Yet staring at this house filled with things and not my people caused tears to shutter my eyes. To add to the grief, I accidentally knocked over my mom’s floral bag containing her obit collection. She’d cut them out of the physical newspaper and kept them, until she sent a donation. She’d never finished the pile. Now my mom and dad have passed into history, and my heart pounds to the beat: I’m the last generation. I’m the last generation. I’m the last generation. Just as we all are, if we live long enough.

Going home to a house decorated only with memories is tough. It requires of us the deepest of inventories, the most honest of appraisal. Items are picked and weighed for either the keep pile or the garage sale. Keepsakes are one thing, and emotions another. Grief, anger, loneliness, and a host of others show up in the houses of our minds at the least likely of times, asking us to take stock, to pick out the shining and the tarnished, examine their worth or flaw, and tally up a price. 

The emotional appraisal is the costliest, the hardest to mine and yet the most freeing and worthwhile. If we do a thorough soul-search, we recognize the best of what we’re left and leaving is times spent together with family and friends. We can ask ourselves if we’re spending redemptive time with our beloveds. If not, why? 

Disassembling my parents’ house reminded me of another thing. My own children will experience their own appraisals, both physical and emotional, when their father and I pass. They will remember the times I ignored them, the times I spent at their schools assisting, the ugly words I said, the positive ones, I hope. They will see my book and art collections and decide which to keep and which to give away. Hopefully by then, I will have trashed the sickly yellow Samsonite stuffed with 80s college photographs. No one should see their mother in a toga, belly full of beer. 

They will decide how and when to sell the house, divide or donate the furniture, thrift the clothes. They will touch an empty chair and their hearts will tick off time. Feel the weight of how fast it goes. They’ll remember our quirks, endearments, and words spoken, or unsaid.

For one eagle-eyed moment, I glimpse the generations to come. My grandchildren, God-willing, will be grandparents and likewise, will appraise life with their parents one day, although the thought of my children not walking this world anymore makes my heart stutter. Yet, it is the way of it, the earth circling the sun, the seasons counting time, the years becoming decades and centuries. 

What lasts? Love lived loudly. May we not be so much about what we do as how we do with others.

Here are some quotes from my book, After the Flowers Die, encouragement for life after loss: 

• “Before and after the flowers die, it is wise to keep in mind stuff never trumps relationships. What’s important in the end is family.”  

• “Through our struggles and pain, much is to be gained in the telling of how we moved forward, not just for our sakes, but for those yet to come. After all, love and legacy are the best of what we leave.”  

• “Leaving a legacy of morality outlasts all the material possessions in the world.”