Back From Tennessee

Sally an I got back from Tennessee about an hour ago.  It feels good to be back.  For once I'm in the enviable and unfamiliar position of not knowing exactly what to do with myself for a little while.  That kind of thing is rare for me.  I don't even need to go cook right now.  I'm at loose ends.

We went down to Tennessee this last time to clean out my mother's house.  If you're new to the blog, she died last month.  And it's been a struggle for me lately, trying to come to grips with everything.  On top of that, the sheer logistics of her diseases and the fact that I live in Connecticut and work in New York have made things so much more difficult than they had to be.  Well, more difficult than they had to be in an ideal world, anyway.

In any event, Sally and I went down there Friday morning to organize her house, her effects, and all the rest of it in advance of the Estate Sale, which is coming in a few weeks.  We got up at 4:00 am, flew down, rented a car, and then drove to her place.  I dropped Sally off, went to see the Lawyer and the Banker, and then came back.  In the meantime, Sally packed and organized.  We've hired a moving company, and not to put to fine a point on it, but we spent our time in Tennessee lately basically looting my mom's house.  We took 36 bags of clothes to the local Goodwill, packed up the china, the crystal, and the silver, and decided on what to auction and what to move into temporary storage in CT.  My mother is from an OLD Southern Family, and her house was a museum.  Choosing through it and getting it packed was a real job.  Of course, some of the stuff is still bound for sale, but in CT antique stores where it'll hopefully fetch a better price.  And some of it'll no doubt wind up here.  For example, we're going to replace our couch with my mother's new(est) love seat.

It was an interesting experience going through Mom's stuff.  She's got no more secrets, and if you've ever been in a Southern family, you'll know that those secrets can sometimes be profound.  Oddly, the biggest lesson that I learned was that my father, Recon Marine and All-Around Bad-Ass of All Trades that he was, was an inveterate scrap-booker.  My entire High School swimming career is enshrined in scrapbook.  He saved every damn news clipping!  So is my Plebe year at West Point.  And his time in Okinawa, Japan.  And the year he spent living with a woman after my mother divorced him.  It was wonderful, really, getting a glimpse into his mind back before he went crazy.  It was almost like talking to him in the way-back-when.

Mom also had all my West Point uniforms, a million pictures from the old days, and a basically a metric ton of memories, all crammed randomly into drawers along with medical bills, prescription forms, and tchotkes from TJ Maxx that she bought on sale whenever she got depressed.  Going through all that stuff was... heartening?  depressing?  invigorating?  a sense of closure?  Maybe a little of all of that.

In any event, we met with the Auction Guy and the Mover, and we got the house packed up.  Truthfully, I didn't think we'd have time to do it all, but we worked hard, and we finished early, and yesterday we even knocked off early and went to dinner.  And after dinner, we went to Tullahoma's used book store, where I found a copy of my Favorite Comic of All Time, the New Mutants Special Edition... for $.99!  Of course, I immediately bought that for Hannah, along with the first How To Train Your Dragon book and something about unicorns.

And now we're home, and... yes, my time is running out after all.  Have a nice Memorial Day, and thank a Veteran.