When Bill's mother passed away she left us with quite a mess to clean up. Her house was about 4300 sq. feet of nostalgia. and crap. It took weeks and weeks to go through everything. What made it so challenging was you would open a drawer or box or closet and there would be 30+ years of coupons or newspapers or clothes and then you would come upon a birth certificate or 100 year old pictures. Or my personal favorite a closet with 200 pairs of shorts on hangers from size 2 to 14. We counted them. Jane had lots of shorts.
There comes a point where you're one match away from solving the entire problem. We had a commercial dumpster delivered and set up in the front yard. It was liberating.
Every once in a while you'd come across a real treasure. And sometimes it was something else. The kind of something else you'd wish had stayed in Pandora's box.
 |
| Raise your hands, You gotta let the feeling show.... |
In one bedroom there was an old dresser that had belonged to his grandparents. His mom had moved the dresser into her house after her mother passed away seven years earlier. It was rather eerie in that appeared that the dresser had not been touched since Grammie's passing. Her wallet and driver's license and a variety of membership cards, including old credit cards were still neatly tucked in the top drawer ready for a shopping trip. All the drawers were full of neatly folded clothes and stuff you'd expect to find in a grandma/grandpa dresser. But these weren't your ordinary grandparents. Which may explain why it was never cleaned out before now. And certainly explains why Jane didn't clean it out.
Bill's younger brother , the previously before mentioned coin-rolling brother, was busy cleaning out the dresser while the rest of us were in other parts of the house doing the same thing. A rather loud gasp followed by a OMG kind of panicked scream came from the bedroom. Then a " you, guys, come here, I'm not going to be the only one who sees this".
 |
| Honey, does this make me look fat? |
This might be a good time to mention that their grandfather was a photographer. With his own darkroom. In his own house where he lived in Detroit for 42 years. I wish I had remembered that before going into the bedroom to see what all the gasping was about. Let's just say that Gram and Gramps were not particularly worried about the lighting on some of their more revealing pictures. Complete with lampshades on one young naked woman's head as she was sitting on Gramp's lap while the Gramster was adorned with a lei around her neck. That was the entire costume. Also they were NOT youngsters in these photos. I'd like to tell you how we knew that but I'll spare you. This is also why we were all struck temporarily blind for several hours.
Then we started laughing , mostly because of the wine, and thinking about how much fun this couple had together. They were happily married for almost 60 years. They did everything together. ( since there was documented proof and no ransom notes in the photos I feel safe making this statement) They partied harder and longer than anyone I ever met and that included us at their 50th anniversary party one week after we were married.
We contemplated making that photo into a Christmas Card in honor of them. Gramps would have loved it. Grams not so much. Our children would have been an instant shoe in on Dr. Phil. "You say you were scarred by a family Christmas card? Please explain."
1. Love your spouse - Love your marriage - Have fun ( maybe don't include the neighbors in everything)
2. Have a buddy system when cleaning out your grandparents house.
3. Leis don't cover much.
4. Use filtered lighting.
5. Don't pick your annual Christmas Card photo while drinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment