My grandfather passed away last year. My “papa,” my dad’s dad, my last living grandfather. It was dementia, ultimately, that took his life. And with that loss came a lot of things. Grieving, a funeral, a handwritten eulogy. But it also came with a house.
I always thought that acceptance was the final stage of grief. No one told me that once you’ve reconciled with death and shaped a new normal, there comes more…logistical matters. The will, the bill, the house. The stuff. All of the treasured and trivial belongings left to the earthly world were left with us. From bedframes to bubble gum to a buffalo gold bar. A lifetime’s accumulation of belongings. And we had to figure out what to do with them.
A man of modest means, my grandfather lived in a one-story house in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. His property spanned 11 acres, with a creek, woods and a dirt-biking trail. The shed sits in the backyard, measuring up to the size of the house itself, as an all-purpose woodshop, auto repair, boat boarding side business. If my grandfather wasn’t in his home or at Bojangles, he was building something in the shed.
My parents tasked us with cleaning out the house this spring, in preparation for renters coming in July. The house would be completely redone in two months. But first, it must be empty.
Everything Out
We emptied the house, using the shed as a storage locker for an eventual yard sale so large people would ask if we closed down a store. Going through my grandfather’s things, I came to know him in a different light. The grandfather I had was calm, uncomplicated, honest and goofy. For him, life’s greatest pleasures were discovered through fishing, picking on his grandkids and building decks with my dad. His belongings supported my view of him, but there was more.
How much do a person’s things say about them? Surely you can’t form a full image of someone just based on their belongings, but I’d like to think you can get pretty close. Crumbled up receipts, unfinished to-do lists, whatever’s hiding in the back of your closet. While living, he wasn’t in the right mind to put his affairs in order, to start the cleanup process of what his grandkids might not want to see. It was complete and total exposure.
A yellow corded telephone, a second place golf tournament plaque from 2006, a butter churner, an oriental gas lamp, an ounce of gold mixed in with desk junk, two hidden guns, his military dog tag, a bullet making kit, Glen Campbell’s Old Happy Day record with quick math scratched onto the cover, 10 hand-built flyable airplanes, a briefcase full of newspapers and a note, 30 puzzles, more than a dozen wooden pieces of Vietnam art, a 60,000 pound heavy duty press, a set of collectable Bugs Bunny drinking glasses, an engine hoist, a stump grinder, and a bowl of green rat poison in the kitchen cabinet.
Everything in his home had a purpose for being there, and a purpose for where it was placed.
Through his things, I came to know my grandfather as an extremely paranoid man. A .22 long barrel handgun was wrapped in a towel in the half-bath, fully loaded. A .44 magnum was found in the bedroom closet, fully loaded. A swanky briefcase sat by his front door, tangibly full of what I assumed to be bills and documents. Instead, over a hundred newspapers came flooding out with a note that read “Old newspapers can’t be worth much!!!! Have a great day,” and a hand-drawn clown face at the bottom.
He lived as if someone was always about to break-in. The guns were for protection, one at each end of the house. The briefcase was strategically placed as the first thing you see when you walk inside, easy to grab and not too heavy. Could hold cash, credit cards, bonds, passports, jewelry. Instead, it held a not-so-subtle “screw you.”
For someone who never once spoke about his time in Vietnam, he kept a surprising number of mementos. A dust-covered military vest full of ammunition hung in the closet along with his on-duty luggage and a steal ammo box. We found wooden art from Vietnam all over the house – a cat, matching palm trees, people dancing, tiki men, two giant spoons, and two giant forks.
His taste was kind of random. He wasn’t an art connoisseur and he wouldn’t have paid much for any of these things. Knowing him, he probably bought them thinking someone at home will think this is funny. And then came back from Vietnam with undeniable emotional scars, an ever-present fear of the enemy and 12 pounds of funny-looking wall decor.
It had been months since I finished coping with his death and he had never felt more human. He wasn’t my grandfather anymore. Just a person. Planned, purposeful, nervous, scared, alone. I’d never felt closer to him and he was already gone.
Since then, something about “papa” sounds off to me. I prefer to think of him as “Cal.”
The Bones
While a contractor might see an outdated, one-story ranch house with water-stained popcorn ceilings, I see the humblest triumph of a mild-mannered, blue-collared man
Until 1978, Cal had never been a homeowner. His family lived in trailers until my dad was 15 years old. I can only imagine the joy Cal felt as he moved his belongings from a trailer into a home. Three bathrooms, a full kitchen, a dining room table. That change signified making it in this world. It was his dream house.
After we emptied the house, we stripped it to the bones. Carpets pulled up, doors off, popcorn ceiling shredded, baseboards removed. It was the same place I’d visited every weekend of my childhood. The same place I’d played on the Pac-Man machine and drank grape soda on the porch. But it also wasn’t. It was the shell of a place I once knew, caked in wood dust and white construction powder.
While I’ve always wanted to take a sledgehammer to a wall, something felt wrong about changing the house. For renters, it had to be done. A wall split the main room in half and the master bathroom was smaller than the guest. Cabinets in the kitchen hung so low it was suffocating. But it was also Cal’s pride and joy.
His last few years were spent in a home for patients with dementia. It was necessary. He was a harm to himself when alone. For most of that time, he was confused. His mind took him back to Vietnam, where he relived the war for years. He never asked for a homecooked meal or to see family, but for anyone that would listen, he asked to go home. I think for him, being in that dementia home was a layer of hell. It was Vietnam. I don’t know if he understood where he was. I don’t know if he knew he was dying. But I know he simply wanted to exist in the place that considered him a man of status, the place that fulfilled his American dream. He wanted to go home.
Playing Dress Up
The renovations took the longest. For weeks, we traveled from Raleigh to Fuquay-Varina every day to work on the house.
To Do
- Prime the walls (1 coat)
- Prime the ceiling (1 coat)
- Prime the baseboards (3 coats)
- Prime the doors (1 coat)
- Prime the cabinets (2 coats)
- Paint the walls (2 coats)
- Paint the ceiling (2 coats)
- Paint the baseboards (3 coats)
- Paint the doors (2 coats)
- Paint the cabinets (2 coats)
- Paint and install the vents
- Install the hardwoods
- Install the carpets
- Install the appliances
- Install the vanities
- Install the backsplash + grout
- Calk the kitchen and bathrooms
- Hang the mirrors
- Hang the doors
- Hang the lights
- Touch-ups
It was a lot. Days went by where we crossed off one task and added three more. Half of my wardrobe was run with streaks of eggshell paint. Midnight showers consisted of peeling the primer off my skin, followed by the peach fuzz and epidermis. Chalky water would puddle by my toes, leaving my shower floor grimier each day.
We were enveloped in the project. We had a deadline. Meals were pushed, sleep was stolen, work was rushed. But it was also therapeutic.
It felt like he was alive again.
Whenever we spoke about the house, we always said, “we are going to papa’s.” It was never “we are going to the reno” or “to the Carrington’s new place.” For weeks, we used this present tense rhetoric and I was transported to a decade earlier.
Eating my lunch on the porch swing turned into being pushed by papa as I begged him to go higher. Painting the deep shelves of the closet turned into hiding in them as a deep voice finished counting to 50. Trips to the local home depot turned into sitting in the back of his smoky yellow car on the way to Bojangles.
Every day, I sat on the same rolling cart that we used as kids, painting the baseboards as if he’d walk around the corner at any time and offer me a soda.
After his funeral, I was apart from his things and therefore I was not confronted with constant reminders of the past. But here, I was trapped in a time box. For weeks, I was remembering. Over and over again. Things I hadn’t taken time to remember when I moved on.
I got to experience him as if he was alive again, which was both a blissful memorial and hopeless recognition. I had to constantly remind myself that despite my illusions, he was gone. The person I was just getting to know – more an equal than an elder – passed long ago. And my only chance at a friendship will be after death.
The Finished Product
On July 1st, the Carrington family moved in. Just like that our project was done. There were no more packed lunches or paint drips on shoes. No more skin-soaked paint thinner or saw dust sneezes. And I was removed from my papa once again.
Then, the gut-wrenching realization that I must cope with his death for the second time. I lost him, and now I was losing his last and dearest material possession – one that radiates his energy from every corner, holding more than four decades of life.
But there is one image that sticks in my mind. Mr. Carrington sits on the porch swing with his toddler grandson, swinging ever so slightly. His grandson reaches up at him and babbles something incoherent, and Mr. Carrington cracks a smile for the fascination of life itself.
That image has transformed through the decades, and it has also remained the same. My dad and papa sat on that swing. My papa and me. Now, the Carringtons. Time passes, everything changes, and at the same time, nothing does.
While July 1st marked an end for me, it signified a beginning for the Carringtons. Their first home together, a place to raise their grandson, a place they were proud of. That’s what Cal would have wanted. While the house may look different, the bones remain the same, soaked in the love of a simple man.
