My Parents A brief essay from my LiveJournal
Created: November 24, 2003

Sorry this entry is going to be a bit.. well, morose. It's what's been on my mind lately, and I've been deciding whether or not to even put it on my LiveJournal.. bouncing between marking it "public", "friends only" and what not as it sat on my laptop. Well, here it is.

I've been spending a lot of time lately cleaning up my parents' house, getting ready to hand over the keys to the new owners, who are supposed to take posession of the house on December 1st. With each day, comes another collection of memories that I need to deal with... and another hour or two of crying.

I can't deal with it anymore. I'm alone now. I was their only child, and I have no other family now except my uncle, who is himself not feeling well. I'm sick, partially because of my own medical problems, and that is making all of this that much harder to deal with.

First, there's all the kitsch that my mom collected. Countless figurines, statues, china, demitassie cups, and stuff that's just plain breakable (hence, sometimes referred to as "collectible"). I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with all this crap. I certainly have no use for it, and none of the women in my life have the remotest interest in this.. well, what one female friend referred to as "the Hallmark Holocaust": a 6-foot high shelving unit that's literally stacked with this ceramic detritus.

Then, I move some furniture, and I bump over a piece of this fragile debris field. It turns out to be a music box, only slightly wound. It starts to play, and in this quiet house it is almost ghost-like, playing it's metallic tinkly version of "Everybody Needs Somebody".. or at least the first ten or so notes before the spring finally has no more tension on it and it stops.

And I pick up this stupid object, and I'm suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow for the loss of my mother. At one time, this object meant something to her, and I can't bear to part with it now. I have no place to keep something like this, nor would it be the sort of thing I'd even care about.. but now, it seems posessed with the very spirit of the woman that I knew as my mother. So, one more thing to put in the Big Box Of Stuff I'm Taking Home.

Then, there's my father's stuff. My dad was a proto-geek, which is probably where most of my geek tendencies come from. He had a huge TV, every gadget he could get his hands around (remember CED videodisks? I found a huge box of them in the garage), and went high-tech on everything. Ask me sometimes about how the cable company had to install a new amplifier at the pole just to service the six (yes, six) cable outlets in this house... and remember, there was just THREE PEOPLE living here at the time!

So, in cleaning out what my dad would call his "desk" (I called it his porn stash), I found a drawer full of various miscellaney from his life. A brief inventory: a photograph of the ship he served on in the Navy, a set of early US Post Office patches and a metal "city carrier" badge, a Boston hackney license, a City of Anaheim Convention Center hat, 1970's vintage Disneyland tickets, and his Adray's badge. It was almost a complete snapshot of everything that meant anything to my father. From his short (and colorful, I'm lead to believe) career in the United States Navy, up to his last full-time job as a salesman at Adray's... it's almost worthy of a museum exhibit.

Mixed in this odd collection of souveniers, was a father's day card I sent him when I was six, and a more recent one I sent him from Phoenix, sometime last year. The older card says simply, "I love you" written in crayon. The note inside the more recent card says, "Dad, thanks for everything. Wish you were able to come out here with mom next month, but I understand. Hope your feeling better soon." Of course, this was at the beginning of the gradual decline that eventually ended his life this year.

A few more tears, and a bunch more stuff for the Big Box Of Stuff I'm Taking Home.

And the list goes on. It's almost endless, it seems. Thirty-three years of life in this house, of which I spent.. well, about 16 or so. My entire lifetime, save a couple of months, they lived here. And out of all of these memories, I have to dust a few of them off, pack them in a box, and save them.. because it's all I have left of the people I knew as my parents.

Then, I have to open the door to my room. It's covered in bumper stickers, from everything from "I Voted To Save [Bob]" to long-gone radio stations like Magic 106 and KEZY. There's a bumper sticker from the Grand Canyon, the family vacation when I was 11. Some stupid yellow smiley faces. An Apple Computer sticker. A reflective Christian fish thing. And this is all on the door.

There's a lot of memories in here, as well. Most of my furniture is still here, albeit not exactly in the condition I left it in. But the drawers have a lot of my stuff in them. Boy Scout stuff in one drawer, computer stuff in another, and a drawer that can best be described as "half-finished" electronics projects.

Fortunately, for me, I at least have the comfort of it being MY life I'm remembering, one that still has some time left.

So, I grab a screwdriver, and take the door off the hinges. How I'm going to stuff it into the Big Box Of Stuff I'm Taking Home, I don't know.. and I don't care. It's going home with me.

The pagan inside me knows that to understand the present, and to enjoy the future, we must honor the past. I want to take all this stuff, put it in a glass case in my house, and keep it forever as a permanent memorial to.. well, not only two very important people, but to an entire era of my life. My life is now forever changed.

And I'm now alone. Keeping this stuff around will only force me to remember what I've lost.

The other part of me wants to shove the Big Box Of Stuff I'm Taking Home in the storage unit, to forget about it. Deal with it another day, this part of me says. It's a tantalyzing offer: to put off dealing with these emotions to some future date is very tempting to me. I'm not in the best mental state right now, so why not put it off?

But, I'm now alone. Keeping this stuff around will serve to remind me where I come from.

But the door... the door goes home. It gets mounted in my bedroom in Orange. Okay, and maybe the music box.

If there's a message I have for everybody who reads my LiveJournal.. nay, everybody out there.. that message is this: Cherish the time you have with those you love. And don't hold back things you might want to say. There are a lot of things I wish I would have said to my parents when they were still alive, and I never got the chance. I'd like to hope that they've heard my voice in mourning, and they understand.

What's the one thing that definately goes home with me when I leave here, probably for the last time? Thirty-three years of the love my parents had for me, and only the pleasant memories. Yes, there were unpleasant ones.. but those are getting thrown away with the rest of the garbage. Yes, there is some emotional baggage caused by my parents' imperfections, but those are being swept away with the stained carpet.

I'm locking the doors, and saying goodbye. To my childhood home, to the neighborhood I grew up in, to 421 S. Falcon Street. And, by extension, to the two people who lived there.. and gave me a home when I needed one. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.

It looks like I'm going to need a bigger box.

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