Topic: Moving

Topic: MOVING

I’m not a fan of moving.  I’ve always hated it.  My mother died on Valentine’s Day 2016. My father remained for almost 3 more years without her and passed away on the last day of November 2018.  Now, my siblings and I are tasked with moving all the stuff out of our parents’ house, getting it ready for sale.

In truth, my brothers and sister and nephews did most of the work of moving.  After we divided up all the big pieces of my parents’ furniture we got word from my brother that we needed to get a lot of the items out of the house quickly, because an inspection was looming.  I wanted to hire movers.  My brother Marty wouldn’t hear of it.  So, on Super Bowl Sunday 2019, my nephews, my sister and Marty delivered pieces of my past to my condo in Hamilton.  It wasn’t as easy a task as any of us had anticipated.  The patio set, and the dining room table chairs were easy enough, but the sleeper sofa was heavy and unwieldy.  Evan and Marty carried it up two flights of stairs to my office, removing the feet trying to make it fit through the door.  They tried approaching from various angles and wrestled in vain with the great beast of a couch for about an hour.  I was useless, as I was nursing a bum knee.  My husband who was recuperating from an illness wasn’t much help either.  Marty joked that some people will do anything to get out of moving furniture.  Since we couldn’t help with moving, I asked myself what would Dee Dunn, my late mom, do in this situation.  I ask myself this question at least once a day.  She would put out a modest spread for the movers.  I set out chips and salsa and cookies and soft drinks.  And even though it was only eleven o’clock on Sunday morning I set out some booze too for the movers. 

Around noon Marty came down drenched in sweat and asked, “How badly do you want that couch to go in your office?”  When I told him I either wanted it IN the office or back to my parents’ house, we agreed that he would remove the door and the door frame.  We would fix it another time.  It worked.  The full-sized couch with the brocade upholstery and pull out full-sized bed has a place of honor beneath my diplomas. 

Every piece had a flood of memories attached to it.  When I looked on my back deck and saw the simple wrought iron patio set with two matching chairs I saw my mom and me sipping our drinks, Dewar’s for her and some Bacardi and Diet Coke for me, while watching the kids play in the yard.  I think of the times I schlepped that patio set in my car to one community theater venue or another.  The patio set served as set pieces for at least half a dozen theatrical productions that mom and I were involved with over the years.

The sofa is the same spot where I slept when I was going through a painful divorce in 1998 while waiting for my new place to be ready.  I slept on it again as both of my parents lay dying.  And other family members kept vigil on that same sofa, watching and listening to their ragged final breaths.  We sat on it and received friends and loved ones at my parents’ respective wakes.   It was where we sat as we celebrated their lives and told their stories.

The sofa has arm rest covers that my nephew Thomas as a little kid used to put on his head and pretend that he was a knight.  I thought of all the green room speeches my mom gave as a director where she’d bring one of those arm rest covers to the theater.  Mimicking Thomas, she’d put the cover on her head and say, “I’m a knight!” with great fanfare.  Her lesson to the cast was if you believed you were a knight or whoever you said you were once you got onstage, the audience would believe it too.  I’m glad the arm rest covers came with the couch. 

But the piece that has the most profound effect on me is the large oak antique dining room table with four matching chairs.  It has leaves so it can become a great table accommodating up to 12 -16 people for a sit-down meal.  We had fancy dinners, and my mom set the table with a lace tablecloth crocheted by my Grandma Donnellon and cloth napkins.  It was a buffet table for so many gatherings-cast parties, the famous Dunn Christmas party, baby showers, wedding showers, birthday parties, and just about any excuse for a party my mom could invent.   We put down newspaper to protect the wood and used it to color Easter eggs and carve pumpkins.  Mom held theater board meetings and did table readings for plays on that big table.  When it didn’t have the leaves, it was used for simple meals.  We never watched tv while we ate dinner.  We had a meal every night, and we sat around this same table and talked and laughed and debated.   After mom died, dad turned the table with all the leaves in place into a vast desk of sorts.  He managed to cover every square inch of table space with his papers and stuff within a month of mom’s passing.  

The table was not used for meals or entertaining until Thanksgiving 2018.  My dad had signed up for hospice for his cancer in September of that year.  A couple weeks before Thanksgiving, Dad said he wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner in his own house and on his own table this year.  I nudged him that he would have to clear the table for the first time in years if that was going to happen.  By God, with some help, he did it.  I made a Thanksgiving feast and set that big ass table with the lace tablecloth and the cloth napkins.  The last real meal my father ate in his life was Thanksgiving dinner at that table. 

He declined rapidly after that meal.  It was a last supper of sorts.  And now this beautiful table sits in my dining room, and we move on.  There will be meals and parties and more memories made here.  We move on.