“As long as they talk about you, you’re not really dead,
as long as they speak your name, you continue.
A legend doesn’t die, just because the man dies.”
Rod Serling
(Dad’s basement stairs / Julie Cook / 2017)
Que the scary music….
Now hear the Psycho shower scene music playing in your head as you open the old wooden door…
standing atop the small landing, staring down the overtly steep and timely worn stairs…
Make certain you hold tightly to the wobbly grey handrails, lest you stumble…
tumbling down into the ancient bricks of the fireplace…
this before making the left turn down the final short flight of steps leading into
the bowels of the raw and dimly lit 65 year old cavern…
otherwise known as the basement of the house.
And so this is where I begin…
Generations that went before me…
antiques, junk, trash, chairs, tables, chests, albums, empty boxes, tools,
circa 1945 office furniture, cameras, train sets, clothes, books, glasses, lamps,
photographs….pieces to the lives of those long past and one recently past.
Lives, homes, treasures and trash…stored, saved, discarded, forgotten…
yet waiting….
The “Your Junk Guys” came today and carried away an ancient refrigerator, mattresses,
boxsprings, computer monitors, two ancient recliners–one being my grandmother’s…
she died in 1986…
plus the ripped out carpet, carpet pads, old light fixtures, bookshelves, paint buckets…
as much as they could squeeze into the two large trucks.
They will be back.
All as I once again find myself running to the bank,
straightening newly discovered messes,
waiting on the flooring guys,
still waiting on lawyers and the court….
balancing how to pay electricians, painters, roofers…
while navigating the roadways…
Picking up the pieces…
of one who preferred just to leave things scattered on the ground…
and in boxes, and in bags, and on shelves, and under sheets…
pieces to all that once was…
his,
hers,
ours,
theirs…
Conveniently out of sight,
but oddly never out of mind….
God, pick up the pieces.
Put me back together again.
You are my praise!
Jeremiah 17:14
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