Stuff

Instead of getting ready for bed and taking a load off my sore (yes, back to work one night after vacation and they hurt already) feet, I'm impatiently waiting for a cinnamon streuselkuchen to come out of the oven, so we can take it to...another funeral luncheon! There won't be any time to let it cool and slice it here, because the minute it comes out of the oven, we have to get in the car and drive up to Frankenmuth. We'll only be staying for the visitation, because we have to get back home to sleep, so we can go to work tonight.

Who died this time? My step-uncle. The husband of my Aunt Mary, who just died 6 weeks ago. He'd been battling multiple cancers, and Mary's death probably was simply one more nail in the coffin. He's with her now, and not suffering, but there has been a bit too much death recently. He was a good solid guy, and he will be missed. I really wish we had gotten the chance to go camping with him and Mary. They loved it as much as we do. Never going to happen now.

And as I smear retinol on my face and use sunscreen and obsess over a healthy diet and exercise, I keep thinking, yep, that's going to be my shriveled and shrunken face in that pillowed coffin some day. No matter what I do. Quickly followed by this thought: No, it could possibly be my face now, in three days. Nothing like three funerals in one summer to get you thinking about your own mortality and your own unique passage out of this life and into the next.

So it happened as we feared: Grandpa, who is turning 98 next month has outlived both his devoted caregivers. Mom keeps making cracks that he's going to outlive her, too.

We've done a lot of reminiscing as we've been sorting through the contents of Grandma and Grandpa's house the last few weeks. It's Grandma's cookbooks and recipes that get to me. I'm grateful for the insulating, neutral emotional state I've been able to maintain while sorting everything else, but the kitchen stuff is what opens the door to a different sort of internal weather. It's been both a joy and sorrow to page through all Grandma's recipes. I've been reflexively putting my face into the books and sniffing. Under the mustiness, the 'Grandma's house' smell is still there. And all the loose scraps of paper with her scrawly handwritten recipes jotted down from the 'Listen to the Mrs.' radio show she listened to every day. There were lots of happy hours spent eating or baking in that kitchen over the last few decades.

It's a huge job, being done in increments of a few hours here, a few hours there. That's pretty much all we can stand to do before we get overwhelmed by all the stuff, and by the insidious smell of urine that still permeates the house. Grandma died in the spring of 2006, and Aunt Mary moved Grandpa out of there a couple years later, and the place STILL smells like a poorly cleaned nursing home. It's also bachelor-pad filthy on top of that, so it's not a pleasant place to hang out.

That, and it's kind of tough to do a really thorough inventory when someone is still living in the house. Cousin Jeremiah has until the end of the month to vacate the premises. J was not having a good morning today. Based on his F-bomb laced Facebook post of last night, I'd say the old reality alarm has just gone off. This would be a lot for anyone to deal with, though. It's pretty harsh having your mother die, then your stepfather, and then be confronted with the surprise of inheriting their house with your brother and now having to deal with the home's contents, including 4 aging/sick pets. And a travel trailer in storage that needs to be sold. No idea if the house payments/taxes are currently paid. No idea whatsoever. I'm a little remorseful for all my schadenfreud of the last 15-20 years or so. We predicted this day was coming for years, but it is a little tough to watch.

Still, his very responsible brother Thad laughed at our comments this morning at Dennis' funeral/visitation and said he's been saying the same things for 20 years. So our resentment and disbelief at J's freeloading lifestyle haven't been out of line.

The last few years have definitely been marked by cleaning out the homes of people no longer capable of living in them. The Uncle Ottomar cleaning/sorting goes on as ever, and now we begin the task of cleaning out Zucker's house. And I figure these are only warm-up exercises for what we are going to face when it comes time for mom and dad Reinert's house, to say nothing of Mom's house. Is this how it goes? Is this a required part of your exit from the world? That, at some point prior or soon after your death, your home and all its contents become a burden for your family or whoever is still around who gives a crap? Seriously, does this much STUFF really need to be left behind? I get more than a little angry when I think that so much of this could have been dealt with before now. By the actual owners of the stuff, or at least the person actually living in the house. But the reality is that infirmity, inability, and good old procrastination rule the day.


Then what about the actual houses? The housing market has pretty much stayed bottomed out here in Michigan and plenty of other places. The only thing going for us is the possibility that Frankenmuth property values may be a little better because....it's Frankenmuth. Otherwise known as the Holy City, as Dad was so fond of calling that area's high opinion of itself. When it comes time to sell these properties, what then? Will there even be a buyer interested in a smelly old house? The idea of us purchasing these properties has been considered, and then with some soul-searching (and a quick hard look at the finances), rejected. Standing in Grandma and Grandpa's front yard, my brother Scott and I discussed future possibilities, and the likely scenario is that the place would be simply demolished and made way for a new, up-to-code structure. Or a parking lot for nearby businesses. And we looked at the house, and in that quiet few seconds remembered all the years of good times in that house, imagined it not being there any more, and took a tentative step toward being OK with that.

Is this how it's going to be for us? How are we going to be remembered? By all the crap we left behind for someone else to sell/recycle/throw away/recoil from in horror? I've felt for the last few years I should be doing some serious watching, learning and note-taking. And filing it all in a big End Of Life folder. Because some day I'm going to be doing all the administrative and procedural necessities Mom is doing right now. And then, sometime long after that, God willing, someone will be doing the same for us. And my wish is that my nieces and nephews or whoever it is won't be looking at thousands of empty glass jars, plastic Cool Whip containers, 20-year old barbecue sauce, and corroded cans of sauerkraut and spaghetti sauce and thinking 'for the love of God, NO WAY...'