My sister and I left Chicago decades ago to start our own families in less crowded metropolitan spots, Minneapolis and Milwaukee, leaving behind our widowed mother. She lived alone, in a home where the porch and her bedroom could accommodate her wheel-chair bound lifestyle, until it became unsafe for her. She suffered from alcohol-related dementia (ARD), and was increasingly allowed to mix pain pills with alcohol by a selfish caregiver who was quickly fired. Mom agreed she didn’t feel safe at home. When she turned 71, she agreed to move into a local nursing home, and sell the house.
We had been traveling to Chicago monthly for the previous 90 days, alternating weeks so mom had a visitor as she made the adjustment to nursing home life.
The house went up for sale. It had sold in three days after the listing. My sister persuaded our mom to lower the price to seal the deal on the very first offer. She also had mom agree to pay the buyer’s closing costs, a deal they couldn’t resist. She then handed authority over to me at the point of contract negotiations over inspection issues. The house was built in 1952, never once remodeled and had no handyman on site since 1994 when our Dad died. I had a lot on my list. This particular weekend we were both in town on a mission: clean out mom’s house in preparation for the closing. We had to get the job done in one day, and do it in 3 hours in order to get back to caring for our own children in neighboring states.
The structure, located “on the good side of the tracks” near Midway Airport, needed a new water heater, but otherwise was sold as is. Now, to rid of the property of its contents.
The house was a museum of icons collected by my pious Polish mother who was church going until the steps at church were obstacles. The steps to the church were hard to climb with a leg brace. When the church built a ramp after the ADA law was passed by Congress, there was no relatives nearby to driver her to mass. Praying at home was more convenient, and who could blame her? The shrines within abound. All had to get price tags for the estate sale.
My mom adorned every wall with the grace of God in the house. If the walls could talk, Easter Sundays would their favorite. Something about having the palms shoved behind the wall frames, the renewal of the year, forgiveness, glory! Grandmother would give out molded butter lambs. The lamb mold was for sale! Relatives would swoop off an ear and spread it on a generous slice of pound cake cut from another lamb with raisin eyes and hard icing fleece. Blessed eggs were traded under woven palms doused with holy water at Church the week before. they crisscrossed the “God Bless Our Home” plaque in the kitchen. The egg tray was for sale!
Facing the picture window in the front room sits a velvety blue couch on which for 30 years no one was allowed to sit, with the exception of Easter Sunday. Adjacent is the now silent Lowery organ that we all played. It takes up one side of the “parlor,” as we were required to call it, since we didn’t really live in our living room. St. Jude and Infant Jesus statues adorn a stereo cabinet that would blast out Petula Clark, Doris Day and Don Ho. Above hangs a shadow box with porcelain knickknacks. Would we find a buyer for the organ? The Shadowbox? The old stereo cabinet as big as a loveseat?
Across from the parlor was the eat-in kitchen, deceivingly large at first glance. The kitchen wallpaper stains talk plenty of old times where a family of five was squished around the table blockaded by a locked wheelchair. No child was excused, as it was impossible to exit the kitchen. Only until every last drop of food was eaten, plates scraped, dishes washed and dried were the wheels unlocked and supervision slackened to allow us to pass outside to play.
The 3-D bust of Holy Mary still illuminates the kitchen at night with its built-in nightlight. Mom’s spokes from her wheelchair wheels would cast spider web shadows on the wallpaper in the Holy Mother’s light. The shadows and smell of vigil candles absorbed in the wallpaper tell of special bedtime prayer sessions that were held. One summer we were kneeling on the linoleum praying Dad’s right injured eye would heal completely after it was hurt discharging a faulty clay pigeon shotgun. He came home playing pirate with a patch on his eye. We were relieved that his right eye’s peripheral vision recovered almost fully.
The plug for the blessed mother still reaches an outlet next to the almond trim wall phone with the coil stretch cord that always shorted out. If it was attached to the wall, it stayed for the new owners! Mom didn’t care because her cordless phone was in better reach, but we had to use the broken kitchen phone that prompted all our teenage friends to ask “Hello? Can you hear me now?” way before the invention of cell phones.
My sister and I walk through the house and shared our “plans of attack.” We had to vacate these premises by the next month’s closing. There weren’t many weekends left to get the job done. Looking down at the stained carpet and scraped floor trim, I vividly recalled our mother stopping her wheelchair as she angled the corner in the T-hallway. She would touch the Madonna and Child painting, asking for strength. She’d push on, the left pedal of her chair gouging the trim and wallpaper as she completed the turn.
My plan of attack was to empty the dresser drawers, six in all, and sort out treasures from trash, with some treasures boxed up for charity. My sister disagreed. She was all about the big stuff. ‘Let’s concentrate on furniture. Put stickers on every piece. $50 or best offer.” Her son pleads to put up the 10 foot sign they nailed to a partial fence brought from her Wisconsin farm that says “Estate Sale: Make an Offer!”
I say let’s put 25-cent stickers on the books and she says, “Put the books in a box for the Thrift Store. The bookcase goes for $5. We only have 3 hours!” Her husband suggests the same. I go along, but quickly grab a hefty bag to start emptying a drawer. I pull out the back of a photo frame, discard the photo of me with my bangs trimmed crooked by my mom (we never went to dentists or hair cutters), and put the frame in a box. My sister can’t believe what she just saw me doing. “Put the whole picture in the box! We’ll be the models for the shoppers buying frames!”
“No, we’ll be sorry!” I laughed. Her son was outside yelling “Garage Sale! Lemonade! $1!” It is only 9 a.m. People started to enter the 3 bedroom, 1 bath ranch house. We quickly lock two of its three doors to control traffic and see who comes in and out of the 1500 square foot property. My hefty bags are in the way of people trying to squeeze in the side door where a utility room is choked by the fridge, washer and dryer with a quick turn into the tiny kitchen.
I find a big paper bag, and write “Table and 4 Chairs $50.” It’s noon. We have emptied the coffee table and end table drawers and one dresser full of tools in the “spare” room that used to by my brother’s.
More people enter. Some are in the kitchen. Some are in the front room. The house is so tiny, six rooms, but with strangers in four of them, I cannot keep track. I walk to the farthest bedroom. There is a man scraping dusting power off the top of the dresser. He pulled the perfumed powder from the top drawer and it spilled. People are taking costume jewelry out of boxes and laying them lopsided back down. “No, the stuff inside the dresser is not for sale. The Dresser is for Sale!” I command. (We had no time to empty the drawers!) I stepped in to close the drawer. They move on to the sun porch where the caregiver stored garden tools, ratty plastic flower bouquets, and a swing bench with no place to sit. It is piled high with empty flowerpots, faded decorative pillows and dusty fabric dolls.
I move back into a den, our TV room, where a man decides to buy a broken recliner chair. It was marked $5 by my sister. Or was that supposed to say $50? He gives me a $5 and before I can challenge it is $50, I see him clear a path to move it out, I get distracted. There is the Walgreens Home Care truck driver calling for me: “Who is the owner? I am here to pick up the Hospital Bed!”
The crowd amazes the man. He looks like “Fat Albert” from the Bill Cosby cartoons, with a wide friendly smile and even wider belly. “Wish I brought my money!” I ushered him to the back bedroom to pick up mom’s hospital bed that was on loan. “Can I go out the back door? I’ll never get pas’ this crowd!”
I unlocked the back porch door and find a Hispanic woman going through my mom’s jewelry box. “Sorry, that’s not for sale!” It was tucked in my old room. Door closed, under a blanket. How did it get back out here? I wonder but then don’t, having observed the ethics of the crowd. I grab the box politely as I can and take the bracelet out of her hand. “Not for sale,” I repeat to the silent woman. Clearly, she won’t even try to speak English right now, playing dumb. I smile at the Walgreens man, excuse myself and hide the jewelry box in my old bedroom, this time deeper under a blanket. I find my brother-in-law and ask him to move two dressers out of there, so we can keep people out of the room where we are storing our own purses, suitcases and “treasures.” We have to drive home to MN and WI, respectively, the next day.
It is 10 a.m. I pass back through the den to see a man going through a cabinet above the TV. “You may want this,” he says, handing me an envelope printed in my mom’s handwriting: “2006 taxes.” Thanks, I say.
As I head to the back of the house to try to get ahead of the crowd and empty my mother and father’s dressers, I meet the sweetest glowing 83-year-old lady who needs diapers. “Can I have these?” she points to the cabinet filled with them. I know my mom paid $40 a package for the extra large. “Sure, one dollar a pack,” I suggest. The silent Hispanic woman comes to the room and asks “shampoo?” She point to five bottles of VO5 stored there. “Sure,” I say. “50 cents each.”
“Can I have a large bag?” asks the elder woman. I hand her one of my hefty bags, glad one is getting used.
The silent one wants the package of toilet paper. “Okay.” Big mistake, I came to learn the next day, after my sister’s family of four and I shared the one bathroom, one roll was out!
That same tall man with a plastic bag filled with small items is still shuffling things around in the TV cabinet. I interrupt his progress with a plea: “Could you just hand me the games so I can put them out for all to see since I can’t reach up there?” I ask him. He complies, and I stack up Bingo, another Bingo, Poker Chips, Pokeno, Trivial Pursuit, and a Bingo roller and box of bingo markers. My mother loved bingo, telling me fondly of one weekend caregiver who also enjoyed playing, requiring the loser to do a shot of Sambuka liquor.
Tall man offers: “I’ll give you $20 for everything in my bag here, the games, you know.” I agree. Another mistake, I would come to find out. As I walk to the front of the house to exchange dollars in the money jar we hid, I see my old dresser is now in the “parlor” with a sticker on it for $2. A buyer is readily handing a bill over to my brother-in-law. I am in sticker shock. Or sticker hell. Only $2? I just sold a toy pool table for $10 and he wants that for a 3-drawer dresser and mirror? My plan was to collect at least enough to cover my airfare here.
In between all of this, my sister runs up to me several times to say, “We need change! I need singles! And our nephew is here!” That was good news. My brother’s son, 22, and his girlfriend, came to help. They live with her parents. The only thing they want from the estate is a vacuum. We readily hand it over. The next day, I miss it, but borrow a neighbor’s to clean up. I put my nephew in charge of the Den to help a man out with the $5 recliner.
At 11 a.m., I see a huge truck pull up. It says D.O.T. on the side. Out steps Fat Albert! “I’m back, and I got money this time!” he excitedly says. My brother-in-law helps him load a few lamps and a table.
The elder lady with the bag full of diapers is chatty, and so grateful for her treasures. She owes $7. We give her a plastic flower and a doily she is admiring free.
A man gestures me to the back of the house. “I want this sewing machine. The whole cabinet and what is in the drawers, too. I’ll give you $25.” I really wanted to empty the drawers beforehand. My mom was the best seamstress ever! I wanted some sewing notions to remember her glory days. She made my sister and me matching Easter dresses. She made the den curtains. She made curtains for my best friend’s mom! She made my brother’s camouflage bedspread. All before she turned 35. After that, post-polio syndrome crippled her hands and caused the back and leg pain which forced her to use a wheelchair. The crippling pain she called, “the cross Jesus asked me to bear.” It changed her life, caused her to gain weight and left her depressed.
“’M’am? $25 for the whole thing?”
“Yes, you can have it all.” He paid me, and when I got back to the den after depositing the money in our jar, I realized I should have looked under the stool cover to see what mom had tucked in there. Another lost unknown.
As I walked past the crowd head down, I caught the eye of an adorable five-year-old girl with puppy dog eyes begging her father for money to buy the games set out on the blue couch. An excited woman grabs my arm. “I’ll take the couch!” That was a score. Finally, something large is selling for a solid $50 and a big piece will be out of the way. While my sister handles that sale, I tackle the pots, putting them in a box. Two new customers, large women that take up the entire kitchen path where I plan to work, see me pull out a roaster. “Oh! How much is that?”
“Oh hon, her friend says, “You can’t fry no chicken in that. And these pots are too shallow. But that soup pot looks good. Can I have that one?”
I agree. “How about $2.50?” I propose. More than my dresser went for, so I am pleased with myself for the moment. It was a deal.
Now for the TVs. They are marked $5 each. All the lamps go in the first hour. I sell a pair for $7. My mom’s hairdresser calls my cell phone to say “Hold the TVs I will be there!” but she doesn’t show.
It is noon. The house is easier to walk through now. The chairs couch and four of six dressers are gone. The kitchen table and chairs and the two high quality dressers do not sell. I am amazed, as those dressers were the best pieces in the house, and we even suggested $40 each. An offer for $25 each came in, but I declined. Such solid hard wood! All the fancy knobs and hidden drawers! I should have given in.
At 12:05 pm, my sister calls off the sale. “We are done for the day! Take down the sign!” She ushers people out. We are mentally anguished and physically exhausted. A man will not go. He keeps asking me for half-empty laundry detergent bottles. I tell him we have sheets to wash. Please go now.
The kitchen box of pots is so heavy we can hardly move it out to the garage. Five large boxes sealed up with tape for charity sit in the front room. Three full hefty bags of non-treasures for the alley garbage, three more to go.
My brother-in-law asks: “Did you sell the antique miniature sewing machine that was above the den TV?”
“No,” I reply in disgust. “But I know exactly which customer hid it in his plastic bag full of games.”
“We could have sold the dresser sets today,” my sis’ accuses.
“But mom’s hairdresser promised me she’d take them, and the TV’s!” I defend.
The hairdresser calls the next day and takes the TVs alone. No dressers, sorry she misled me. “Just don’t have the money right now.” She genuflects at the blessed mother in the kitchen and makes the sign of the cross. “You know you need to take that over to the nursing home! Your mom loves that piece! If you don’t take it, I will!” she says, handing me a check for $10. She promises me it won’t bounce. She has $30 in her account, but her rent is paid. I tear it up when she is out of sight, and take a seat on the floor.
God Bless this home and the people familiar with its walls.
BACKSTORY:
There is a reason my sister is in such a hurry. Mom cannot be allowed to go back home. It is too dangerous. At the time, this wheelchair-bound widow who caught polio in 1942 lived alone successfully for 10 years. However, one disastrous evening in May 2005, mom fell as she was transferring from her chair to the bed and broke an arm. The call button on her emergency alert necklace couldn’t be pushed as it was trapped under her 200 pounds of dead weight. The responder calls wouldn’t have helped anyway since mom knocked the phone off the hook on the way down.
It was her mother who saved her. Grandma called mom from her nursing home every night at 6 pm. Alerted by a busy signal that went on too long, Grandma called neighbors to enter the home and check.
After her recovery four years ago, we insisted mom either move up north near us in Minnesota or Wisconsin, or hire a live-in caregiver. Mom opted for the latter. She hired an immigrant from Latvia to reside with her for the next four years. All went well until this year when mom got Direct TV. The caregiver discovered she could watch all the Satellite Russian TV mom paid for, she decided not ask for any days off. Instead, she succumbed to mom’s frequent pleas for another pain pill. Mom slept. A lot. The caregiver watched more TV. She discovered mom didn’t have an appetite. With extra free time spared from cooking meals, she starting taping Russian soap operas for her friends. After three months of aiding my mom in this fashion, mom had upped her intake to some 80 narcotic pills in one week. Her hallucinations, forgetfulness, delirium and panic attacks were not discovered until the end of March when mom called us. Mom never, I mean NEVER, called us. Something was wrong. My sister sped from Wisconsin to Illinois to check mom into a hospital. The caregiver was sent packing. ###
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