The Dissipating Storm...

Nine months have now passed since Dad suddenly left us and the storm has started to peter out a bit.  The probate, lawyers, and general red tape has gotten eerily quiet.  About a month or so ago, Sarah and I made the snap (and perhaps irresponsible) decision on a quiet Saturday that we would begin living in my ancestral home that very night.  We grabbed all of our clothes and personal items (that hadn't already made their way over there), threw them in the car, and just decided to plant our flag at the new (old) place.  I had only recently found out that I could legally move in, thinking that probate proceedings forbade it.

This was surreal in so many ways.

First of all, how many people have that option?  "Honey, today I think we will simply start living at our new house... let's just go on a whim."  No giant moving day, no renting of the van, no begging of friends and purchasing beer and pizza (just help with the big stuff from the Hyer boys and their mom as the days went by), and no scrambling to set up the bed first so we can sleep when we finally collapse.  The house was ready for us (or at least fit for human consumption).  Sure, we hadn't quite finished redecorating or moving all of our stuff there, but it was certainly suitable for human occupation.  Also, it would be easier to work on the old house when all our stuff was out of it.

As I drove through the wheel ruts I had created on Chestnut Ridge Road from the endless trips back and forth between the houses with my Kia Sportage's cargo area packed full of clothes, I started to wonder how this would all feel.  The swirling storm of paperwork, lawyers, financial advisors, moving boxes, and planning had not afforded us any time to consider the emotional ramifications that this move was going to cause.  I was moving back home!  Sarah kept telling me how easy it would be for me, since I grew up there, and how difficult it was going to be for her to live in the place that she had only ever known as my parents' house.  Silently, I hoped she was right about the "going back home" part.  As we laid ourselves down to spend our first night here, a strange and unexpected feeling took over.  

This was not my childhood home.  It was completely alien and new.

At first, it had the ambiance of that decent hotel that one stays in on vacation.  Kind of more upscale than how we normally live; it was cozy yet exciting.  With the television quietly flickering in the corner, I felt the little nearly-indescribable tingle that I get every time I stay somewhere fun on a trip.  It was an exotic vacation destination and not the home I had lived in from 1981 until 1999.  Even though we had changed very little in the master bedroom and it still looked much the same as it had when I lived here previously, it was not familiar at all.

Sarah had been wrong.  I wasn't going back "home", I was going to a new and unfamiliar house.  I still can't understand why.  As I sit here typing this blog in the family room that I spent many many years in, it's not even a ghost of the family room that I played all those video games in while my mother begged for me to do something productive.  It is my family room that resides in my new house.  

Mine.

Which brings me to the next point:

Guilt.

I stand every so often in the sun room, which was only built in 2006 (a year before Mom died and not a part of the childhood home that I remember) , and briefly smile.  "This is my awesome, gorgeous room to hang out in.  I can do whatever I want with this space.  My sun room."  The twinge of new-homeowner excitement courses through me as I sit peacefully in the Amish-made double gliding wooden porch furniture that adorns the wall by the door.  I am absolutely high on the excitement of the new and more comfortable life that spans out ahead of me.  We could never afford a place like this on our salaries.  

Never... afford... a place like this...

How did it come to this?, I ask myself, deflated.  I have done nothing to earn this great home.  I rode out the declining health of my parents, greedily licking my chops waiting for them to die so I could have their stuff like the spoiled-brat only child that I am.  I am a horrible person for enjoying this inheritance as much as I am. 

These thoughts run through my head daily.  It's got to be that sun room.  My amateur-psychoanalysis of myself has revealed that it is the one room that was not there when I was living here as a young adult sponging off my folks.  It is the reminder that I have no Mom and Dad to run to when things get out of control.

And it shall, henceforth, be referred to as "The Guilt Room"

While I am enjoying working on, changing, and planning improvements to this place, I wonder if I am doing it for Sarah and me or am I afraid of besmirching my folks memory.  I keep the house and yard maintained as well as I can but I can't yet figure out if I'm doing it for me or them.  

As any spoiled brat, selfish child should do, I try to ignore these pangs of guilt as I watch my 47" flat screen sitting in my newly tailored "man cave."  I hide in my Playstation online shooting faceless people in mock war and push these adult feelings aside on some days.

The "Man Cave", because I can't find anything better to call it.  Yes, I'm typing this on that little netbook in the foreground.

Other days, I pour myself into working in the yard trying to hold back the aftereffects of the all-out monsoon season we have been suffering through for weeks.  Thanks to Eric, the riding lawnmower is working better than ever and I really enjoy cutting the grass... on Dad's lawnmower; the one I used to enjoy playing with when I cut his grass during his vacations.

My little lawn tractor...

"My" little lawn tractor...

I don't deserve that either.  But I love it.

Note that I have already gone to Walmart and bought a cupholder to slap on the side, guaranteeing my place in the lexicon of redneckery forever.

I mentioned the "ghosts" in an earlier blog.  This is not referring to anything paranormal or anything like that, but my folks' "spirits" still oversee everything I do.  I can hear my father shouting at me while I mow the yard that the deck is too low and I'm cutting too short.  I can hear Mom quietly not approving of the new chandelier that I have hung (with no prior experience and no instructions in the box,  I might add) in the dining room.  I hear them both griping at me for removing all of the brass/gold decorations from the front room and getting rid of the ostentatious hanging lamp that adorned the wall near the thermostat since I can remember.  I can sometimes feel Dad's dissaproval that I brought back home the old wine rack and put it back where it was for all those years after I took it to prevent him throwing it out after mom passed.  I can sense Mom not liking the fact that I am slowly getting rid of her grape motif in the kitchen and replacing it all with rooster paraphernalia (go ahead, make the obvious jokes about us loving the ____ ).

Yet The Picture now peeks out at me from beside the stereo with their glances seeming to be those of approval and not disappointment.  So is this all in my head?  Is this latent guilt at having inherited the last vestiges of my younger life?  This is what they wanted; the last will and testament said so clearly and distinctly.

I placed that picture there for a reason.  Though I probably should have placed it in a prominent place on a wall with a nice light shining on it as a shrine to those who have gone and left me this life, but it seems better to me to have them cozily looking over me in my "man cave" from a warm and comfortable spot beneath my DVD and Doctor Who collections.  It just seems right to have them there... I don't know why.

They seem comfortable there, and they have the best seat in the house for the poor-man's surround sound that  I have hooked the TV  into.

I find myself wondering if I am that spoiled brat only-child that I accuse myself of.  How many other people are in this position?  I am in a much better mood since I moved in... and I feel guilty about that.  Did I grieve enough? Mom's death in 2007 hit me like a ton of bricks and I spent weeks being a total mess.  For weeks, I was haunted by a vision of mom's hand pressing against a impenetrable pane of glass reaching out to me while she watched me do mundane things (thinking about that image still chokes me up a bit).  My healing process took many many months but I finally got there.

I don't feel like one night blubbering about how I didn't want to be the "big boy" while sitting in his chair was enough of a sendoff for Dad.  My rational mind says that, having lost one parent already, it made the second somehow "easier."  While it may sound psychologically sound, it is very cold.  The hard fact is that I really am in better spirits now that I have moved in here.  Is it the memories?  I hope so.... if not, I have to feel even more guilt about it.

Something that I have come to terms with is the disdain I had for my old house (thanks to Mechele for making me admit it).  Now there is a real idiotic thing to say.  That is my first purchased home... a major investment made by me and the wife.  The writer's cramp from signing all the papers still has not gone away.  Something one should be proud of.

I was proud of it and loved it... for about a year.

Then I lost my mother.

Let's set the wayback machine to the year 2005.  We were tired of the duplex life in Lakewood.  We felt it was time to return me to the 'burbs from whence I came.  I wanted out of the claustrophobic life of the urban landscape.  Also, Mom's declining health dictated that we should be geographically closer.  We had saved up some money and decided it was time to strike.

Mom and Dad were there every step of the way.  Mom and Sarah went around looking at houses (actually I think Mom did more looking on her own since she was retired) for weeks.  The hunt did not take long before we found our little slice of foreclosure heaven.

Nothing wrong with it.  A nice little chunk of suburbia.

It was going to be tight, but we thought we could afford it.  Sarah had some inheritance of her own coming and that money would make part of the down payment.  We were prepared to make a bid when Mom shocked us.

"I'm cashing in one of my life insurance policies.  I want to be around to watch you enjoy (and not enjoy) this adventure.  No point in you waiting until I'm dead to get this money; I want to watch (and laugh).  Now you have your down payment."  This was my mother at her normal, logical, businesslike self.

We bid, we negotiated, and finally got it.  We moved in on Thanksgiving weekend 2005.  All was good and right with the world.  I was now a homeowner and subject to all the "fun" that would afford me.  Mom was correct in that she got to enjoy how I would call Dad every time something went wrong.  She would always show up with him when he came to help me unclog a drain or try to fix the furnace and I will believe to my dying day that she did it so she could laugh at me, but in a loving way.

In February 2007, we had to take an emergency flight to Florida because her kidneys were failing.  She had gone down there to visit her brother and got very sick.  Her congestive heart failure was catching up with her several years past the time the doctors had told her she would be gone.  She beat the odds for quite a while and had gotten to celebrate her 40th wedding anniversary with Dad (how many of our generation will be able to hit that milestone?).

We came home without her and Dad was never the same again.  

I think I finally grew up at that point.  Dad was no longer the unflappable, unbeatable, grouchy overlord I had painted him as during my formidable years.  He was now a broken, lost soul looking for a direction to lean.  Now he had to look to me and my wife for comfort and stability, though he wouldn't have admitted it at the time.  I had to step up and be an adult and dispense sage-like advice from all of my knowledge of psychology (which he frequently ignored... as I knew he would).  

His first near-death trip to the hospital due to his COPD/pneumonia had him acting (understandably) like a child.  He was scared and (he felt) by himself and one afternoon found me sitting alone with him in his hospital room while he threw what could only be described as a "temper tantrum" because he just wanted to go home.  I tried for hours to calm him down and make him see the intelligence of staying where he could be helped for another few days.  All of the "grown-up" wisdom I had suddenly developed in the previous years was completely dismissed as he sulked, walking around in tight circles tethered to the countless tubes and wires he was attached to.

"I'm the father; you're the son, and I'm right.  You don't tell me."

"That's it, I'm calling Mechele and she isn't going to put up with your shit."  I waited for her to get there, and then I left frustrated, went home, and drank a rum-and-coke (admittedly that was a bad idea considering my family history of people escaping reality in such a way... but it was the one and only time I have ever done that), calling him for updates later from a safe distance.  Cowardly?  Yes, but I had reached the end of my rope that evening and would do him no help at all by staying.

So that was the first time I ever had to (try to) reverse the roles we were comfortable with.  The son had become the adult and I know he understood that I was right but stubbornly (no, not Paul!) refused to admit it.  Mechele and I still talk of that day (though Dad and I never spoke of it again) and kind of chuckle about it now.  It's just one piece of paper in the filing cabinet of our last few years with Dad.

By the time the lung cancer reared its ugly head, our relationship had matured a bit and he allowed us to help him with things.  He would come over for dinner occasionally and let Sarah put the lotion on his back to soothe the radiation burns he had gotten from treatment.  He was beating the cancer and had a new purpose in life.  He seemed happier and had started treating me like the adult I was.  It was different and magical and slightly disjointed.  I even talked him into not canceling the Labor Day get-together that has been a Manns family tradition all my life.  We fill the house with family from out of town and just laugh it up for the long weekend.  He was set to cancel it because of his illness, but a mid-summer visit from some of the family helped convince him that he needed it.  He had a ball that weekend.

Two weeks later, it happened.

All of this took place in the span of a few years... a few years in that little house that had spawned all this misery.  None of it would have happened if we hadn't bought this @#$%ing house.  If I hadn't grown up, I would still need them and they would still be here for me.

That stupid house.  Sure, it is decent and I have some good memories there, but I still irrationally blame it on all the horrible things that have happened since we bought it.  Maybe that's why I'm better here in the old ancestral place where very few tragedies have taken place.  This house is full of good memories and, thanks to facebook, I have recently reconnected with so many people from that happy past that I spent in this house.  I'm going backwards and I think I like it.

I understand now that I never grew up.  Maybe it's because I never had kids of my own?  Ah, it doesn't matter why... I just know that I am comfortable here despite the soul-crushing happenstance of recent years.  It's time to stop playing junior analyst to myself (a feat which is totally impossible anyway) and just ride it out.

The Labor Day gathering will take place this year if I have to use a gun (of which they have been warned that I own nowadays) to make people come for it.  We can all pretend that Dad is still here and they can make some of those "adult" decisions for me during that weekend, right?

Nope.  I have to step up and take over as "Head Grouch;" the mantle he carried for years.  I think I'm ready now since I recently attended the family reunion in West Virginia for the first time without him and had a surprisingly good time.  After all, it was the first time I got to visit Mom and Dad together (they are buried down there) since 07 and it was oddly comforting.

Dad would have said his flowers were better looking than Mom's.  She would have probably slapped him.

It really did hit home that I was the "big boy" now, and I was oddly comfortable with it.  While I still suffer the guilt that I have taken over there very lives in almost every respect, isn't that what they wanted me to do?  They always said so.  Dad flat out told me as much three weeks before he died.  He was going to sign over the house to me and take care of all that unpleasantness before he went to make it easier on me.  We thought we had a couple of years to do it, but we were all wrong.

But, as I said, the storm is dissipating now and life is settling down to what I will, someday, find normal.  I think I have simply not had time to properly grieve and maybe, just maybe, I will finish that process when everything is done and settled... who knows?  For now, I just keep mowing the lawn and gathering friends as often as I can in the "Casa de Manns"... now under new management.

Sorry Mom, but I like the new chandelier.  It stays.