Resourceful Disassembly

We met at the house to disassemble their lives. In one evening, we took apart what they had created, collected, and been in their years together. We held the pieces of their lives - our history - in our hands and decided what we would keep, and what we would leave behind forever.


Some things we all remembered the same, waved off or declared a keeper without discussion, and moved away from without a second thought. Others held different meaning for each of us, depending on our ages, interests, and perceptions. We all wanted a few things, and there were some none of us wanted but begged the others to take so they wouldn't disappear.

The white step might represent every category. Built from wood scraps in Daddy's workshop, sanded to perfection, and finished with the white, high gloss paint he often used, it might have brought in a quarter at a yard sale. None of us needed or wanted it, nor could we let it go. My brother and I remembered it first as a nuisance we had tripped around in the bathroom for a few years. Our much younger and shorter sister defended her step to independence; with it, she was able to wash her hands and brush her teeth without assistance.

My daughter won possession of the step with her memories of dragging it around while she helped her grandfather build the house. Whatever the project, she appeared, white step and plastic tools in hand, to stand or sit beside him until they had completed their work. He coached, complimented, explained, and wasted hours of his time putting his tools down to lift her and the white step and move them to a new position, where he needed her expert workmanship more. It seldom took long for her to inch her way back under his feet, and for him to smile, put his tools down again, and move her to another new spot.

To anyone else, it might have appeared we were cleaning up after what must have been the two worst packrats ever born. After sorting through the coffee cans and wooden crates of doohickeys and thingamabobs in his workshop, the recycles and sale items in her sewing table and junk drawers, their libraries and boxes of documents and greeting cards, I saw the wonder of two resourceful, loving people. The coffee can and junk drawer enabled special moments, like when I came in to see the finished pantry in my remodeled kitchen and recognized the knobs from my old bedroom closet, and when I bought the coat with the ugly buttons, and Mom found perfect replacements in her sewing table.

Between them, they could repair or create, define or explain anything. They left instructions for life, photographs and movies, music, recipes, tangible evidence of their births, marriage, accomplishments, and their appreciation of our expressions of love over the years. For anything we had not absorbed enough of, there was something in that house we could take with us to continue the session.

I came home with the baskets Mom wove and a ceramic clock she painted, a pair of wooden birds Daddy made, a toothpick holder, a bobby pin dish, a planer and a rosary I made for my grandmother when I was in fourth grade. The clock, birds, and baskets are the only items I will ever use and I doubt a stranger would have chosen any of these items from the house full of selections. They mean the world to me because, collectively, they symbolize my parents.