Rant #3,203: Memories

Now that I got all of that off my chest in yesterday’s Rant, I had my first dream-sighting of my mother last night.

As I have so often experienced since my father died three years ago, I had a visitation by the deceased—this time and for the first time, my mother--in a dream I had last night.

It was another restless night of sleeping, with me waking up several times and not having a very good sleep at all.

I remember few specifics of the dream, but my mother was in it.

I think I remember saying to her, like I said to my father countless times in dreams that I have had with him in it, “What are you doing here?”—

But I don’t remember the reply, if there even was any.

I just remember saying after my question, “You actually look pretty good,” as my mother’s face was rounder and fuller that it had been, in particular during her final months of life.

That is all I remember; no context at all and nothing else at all.

When my father died, right after his passing, there were some strange occurrences at the house.

Pictures that had been on the wall for decades either nudged to the side or fell off the wall entirely, and I remember that a wall calendar not only fell off the wall, but popped off as if it had just exploded from its place on the wall.

Were these messages from my father that he was still around?

Who knows, but I have not experienced the same thing with my mother since she passed away last week.

Nothing falling off the walls … just my family’s world falling apart, literally piece by piece.

The realtor will be here next week to take pictures of the house, and the house will go into Multiple Listings on September 25.

On September 28, we will have an open house, right in the middle of me covering a convention for work, which should be a fun day for all.

Luckily, I will be recording the convention, so hopefully the muss and the fuss of an open house won’t interrupt me in any way … but I know it will, mentally if nothing else.

And when I finally see the sign on the lawn, the “For Sale” sign, that will be the kicker of this entire episode.

The realization that this house that was my parents’ house for the past 52 years will be erased forever; it will be just another house on the market once that sign gets planted in the front lawn, a dagger to my heart related to this entire business.

And again, whether my family and I continue living there might take a bit of divine intervention.

As my family and I continue to clean out the house, a lot of memories go by us, and much of it lands directly in the garbage bags we are using, being placed at the curb for pickup.

Yesterday, my wife found her long-lost high school yearbook in the rubble—dating from 1974, or years before she even knew I existed.

She went through it page by page, and actually hooked up right here on Facebook with a long-lost friend from those years.

I have no idea where my high school yearbook is, but if it is in the rubble, I am sure we will find it; if not, then I can live without it, as I have for decades.

It is probably in the house … but where?

I have no idea, but I am happy that she found her yearbook in all the garbage we carted out.

There is so much garbage in front of our house now that we could actually reconstruct it all and make a nice sleeping area for ourselves if we really wanted to do such a thing—

But come Friday, during the garbage pickup, it will be gone, out of sight and out of mind—

And we have plenty to go, so it should be several more weeks of getting rid of many memories, from the house to the curb.

That is just the way it is, and right now, I can live with it—

Do I have any other choice?