The Way Some People Die

. . . is the title of a book by Ross MacDonald. I'm reading a collection of short autobiographical pieces by MacDonald (real name Kenneth Millar). Millar describes emotional and practical difficulties at various stages of his life, "seismic upheavals" such that I think anyone could appreciate or identify with. The real difference is that Millar never seems to have suffered from a creative block.

He could always write it out within his fiction. That's what I had learned to do as well. But it's not there anymore.

These days off, or at least the unoccupied hours, are deadly to me. Not being able to write is like not having a mouth. Beating myself up over it doesn't help at all.

If I were to hire MacDonald's detective, Lew Archer, to help me solve the case, he would find several causes (as I have done), but perhaps he could find solutions that are evading me.

First, and possibly foremost, I used to drink while I wrote. Not "get drunk," mind you -- if that happened, the work came to a screeching halt. But a drink or two or three, taken over a few hours, would lubricate the gears, get them turning again, unlock my imagination and free my hands from restraints.

I don't have that tool anymore. My gears are frozen and rusted badly in place, and my imagination seems to be bolted shut, barring only the random images of horror that sometimes burst out when I'm trying to lie at rest.

The other thing I've come up with is the feeling that, with all my grandparents gone and now my mother gone, too, there's nobody left that I need to prove myself to. My friend BC would likely say to this, "Prove it to yourself!"

Myself. That's the person I least care for. The only person I hate more is my sister, who helped make me this way.

I honestly believed that a few days off, some down time to gather myself, would be all that I needed to get going again. Instead, it's having the opposite effect. It's almost as if the outrageous craziness of the last nine months kept me from experiencing a level of the grief and despair (which hardly seems possible), and now that things have calmed down a lot, the silence and the vacancy has allowed a fresh tsunami of emotion to hit me. Not being able to work at any creative pursuit (not even my scrapbook of the old house, which is filled with associations that I can't bear to reflect upon anymore) -- and beating myself up about it -- is having real emotional consequences for me. It means that I have no outlet.

Blogging about it all seems to be the only thing I can manage. But it makes me feel that I should change the title of this blog to "The Broken Record."

*

I came to the Millar book yesterday when Annie Proulx's Bird Cloud fell through for me. Proulx is an alum of the college that employs me, making Bird Cloud the no-brainer choice for Book of the Month when it comes out in paperback this October. So, I thought for once it would be nice to have actually read the book of the month.


The book is a memoir of Proulx's experiences building her Dream House in what used to be a protected reserve, which is now privately owned by her. Right away it got off to a rocky start for me with a long stretch of present-tense writing. As a young man, the present tense never bothered me much, and I even used it myself on occasion when immediacy seemed an important element of my story. But now that I'm a crotchety Olde Farte, present tense just really deeply annoys me, especially when the writer seems to be using it for no good reason. That was the case here.


Then Proulx launches into a far-ranging history of her family, and although there were small points of interest I largely didn't give a damn. Something is wrong in the "Reading and Dozing" process when the dozing starts to take up much more time than the reading. Proulx was still in the middle of this preliminary ancestral ramble when the chapter abruptly ended. I realized that I'd plowed through the whole first chapter, and Proulx had yet to begin the story that I showed up to read.


Fortunately, it was an advance reader's copy (the home shelves of most booksellers are full of these, I imagine), so I had no money in it and could take it back to the store. It went straight into my bag. Life is too short for books that can't come to the point.

*

On Friday afternoon I drove all the way out to South China in my Highly Illegal car. My lawyer had said that she wanted to see me. I was then as I am today keeping the fact of being emotionally overwrought just under the surface. It turned out that she wanted to make a distribution from my mother's estate.

As a result of this meeting, my father and his wife are now completely paid off in what they loaned me to buy this house, and this house is now 1/3rd mine, free and clear. I was given an additional amount. I won't type the number, but it's enough for me to pay off all my credit card debt and buy a car outright, without having to go into additional debt. This amount still leaves a considerably larger amount left in the estate, that will come to me later.

So -- things should be looking up, right? I should be feeling better about life.

I am not. It's actually deeply upsetting to me. Tears are running down my face as I type this. I cannot escape the fact that in order for all of this good to come about, Mom had to die. I'd give it all back, and more, to have never had that happen.

-- Freder.

So Much Hot Air

Yesterday the CD-ROM arrived from the auction house containing every photograph that they took of the the things from my mother's house (at least, the things that were in the second auction just recently). The banner pictured above used to hang on the back stairway leading up to the guest suite. This was a part of the house that was once used quite often, was closed only in winter, but which in recent years had been completely shut off. It was one of the areas of the house that acted a bit like a time capsule: on the rare occasions I ventured in there, the back staircase felt a bit like an abandoned storage room in a museum.

I plan on using the photographs, which are beautiful, in an array of creative projects. I'm especially looking forward to an additional CD-ROM of pictures from the upcoming Toy and Collectibles auction. There is a children's story that I wrote years ago, based on Mom's collection of toys and dolls. At the time, I was just learning how to use a computer and programs like Photoshop, and my efforts at generating electronic illustrations were crude at best. Now I have some experience, and Creative Suits CS5, and I plan on putting them both to use.

One of the very few items of real value that I kept out of the auction was the star of that story. He is sitting upstairs in the studio right now. I will need more photos of him than the auction house would be able to provide.

The first line of the story is: "The bear was lonely, and his socks didn't fit."

Also yesterday, I had the first "bad morning" that I've experienced in a while. What brought it on, I wonder? Too little sleep, a hangover from the night before, both? When I came down to the kitchen a wave of sadness hit me, followed by the familiar claw of anxiety.

But -- it wasn't as bad as some of the bad mornings I experienced at the old house, and today I was the almost perky, practically OK person that is becoming the new normal.

It's been a peaceful week here. I've been Taking Deep Breaths. With the move behind me, a layer of stress is dropping away and the World That Was is getting smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror.

It's still a part of me. I just don't live there anymore, and where I am living is so full of possibilities that I'm still just looking around.

I love the new house, and think that the basic layout of the furnishings worked out really well. The cats appear to agree with me. It's home now. Everybody's stretching.

Being able to write this blog from home is a danged good thing, too. It's both a daily task and a challenge. Getting into the habit of writing something, anything, every night is exactly what I need. It won't always be the blog. I hope that, sooner rather than later, I'll be able to find it in me to work on other projects.

Baby steps! That's my mantra!

Here's the soundtrack for this post.

There was a brief rearing of the past last night. The new owner of the house called. He wants the keys that I left with my lawyer, and he has questions about the things that were left behind. I understand his concerns, but I can't really help him. That part of my life is over. He needs to deal with the lawyer, or with my sister, who after all is the one who sold him the place right out from underneath me. It's time for her to step up to the plate, and do her part, and have her closure, if she wants it. I am done.

*

This evening over dinner I watched the animated "film," 9. I have to use the quotations for a couple of reasons. First, no film was harmed (or even touched) in the making of this motion picture. Second, as a movie it could be a great video game. Could, because as it stands, it doesn't even have the value of a video game, the interaction or the solving of puzzles. Even for a modern CGI animated movie, the "plot" is astonishingly thin. Why did they bother to hire such great voice talent when there is so very little dialogue in the picture, and most of what dialogue there is consists of grunts, wails and moans?

Literally, the plot is nothing more than an explanation for the graphic design. And, yes, the design is wonderful, but you know what? Wonderful design is everywhere these days. There's a surfeit of it, and I say that as a designer myself.

Literally, if you've seen the trailer for this movie, you've seen everything that it has to offer and then some. I'm glad that I was eating my dinner while it was on, so that I could say it wasn't completely wasted time.

I'm on my bike. Fiddle-dee-dee, tomorrow is another day.

-- Freder.

Here at the End of Time

The old house as I prefer to remember it.

I hadn't seen Tiger Grumpyface since the last really bad storm (more than a week), and I hadn't seen Tiger Whitestockings in two days. At first I wasn't too worried; the food was still getting eaten. But today I saw not one but two strange quats eating off the Tigers' plate, and for the first time I started to suspect foul play.

Instead, when I went out with their dinner just now, both Tigers appeared and seemed eager to see me. Whitestockings had lost some weight. But all is well. Phew.

*

It was all over at the old house by a quarter to two. I felt overwhelmingly sad as I pointed the car away, oppressively sad. But when I arrived home and came into the new house, I saw that my life was here, and was immediately cheered. It's been a damn lot of work, and it's not over, and the future -- as the fortune-tellers say -- is in doubt. But home is here.

That's a mighty powerful three words.

I was up at seven-thirty to do my chores and feed us all, started out with plenty of time but somewhere along the way I spent too much time online and ended up running a bit late. The mysterious plower had been back, and this time he had shoveled out the path to the front door as well. JA, my lawyer, was no more than a couple of minutes behind me pulling into the driveway.

I was glad that she came, because it was a help in many ways. But helping me wasn't her main motive in coming -- she was hoping to score some Free Stuff.

I was okay with that. She didn't take anything without asking first, and the auctioneer was leaving a fair amount of stuff behind. I still can't understand his thinking. Some of what he took was absolute rubbish, fit only for Goodwill; meanwhile, he left some perfectly good and salable things behind. I didn't want them; or, if I did, I didn't have room for them. As an example, Mom had a set of six giant children's blocks that were made out of wood. She used them for both packing and display purposes at shows and in her shop. I'd love to keep them, but there's no room, what would I do with them? I think they'd bring something at an auction, but Steve the auctioneer was disdainful. He tried to take two small, worthless, cardboard display pieces that I expressly wanted to leave for the new owners, but he won't take the blocks.

He is a loud, brash person. He is completely bald (not even having eyebrows). He persisted in leaving the main door wide open to the cold, even when no one was carrying anything out. 

The morning was a long emotional replay of the last two times that the auctioneers had come to tear the place apart. They made a terrible mess, again. In my old bedroom I pulled down a last couple of posters. I looked out of the window for the last time. I hid in there until the tears stopped.

JA sat down with me and told me about the auction. It did not go as well as anticipated; at any rate, JA thinks that we may end up with about half of what they had estimated. As she flipped through the catalog and showed me the lots, and the prices they had gone for, I felt sick and sad. It is galling and depressing to see my mother's life reduced to numbers, and such low numbers at that. Some few things went for more than expected, but the vast majority hovered at or below the estimate. I hated even seeing that catalog. I wanted her to put it away.

The day seemed to drag on so slowly. It was cloudy out, so the light was tricky. By noon, I was sure that it was coming up on four o'clock. I was astonished to see that it was just past one when the auctioneers left.

I gave JA a key to the house and one to the small barn. Then, with both of our cars loaded to the roof, we drove down to the neighbor's house. One of the new owners is his son-in-law. We spent about a half hour there, an awful lot of formalities to go through just to drop off the keys. And that was it.

I think it will take me two more trips, not because I have so much left to take, but because it's nearly all bulky. There is a wooden deer for the lawn that I am keeping, and a giant rooster sign that my mother and I made when she was trying to have a shop there at the house. There's a stepladder that's going to have to go down the middle of the car.

I'm going to try to get it all tomorrow.

And then, suddenly, my life is going to open up again, at last. As I unloaded the car this evening, I realized that next weekend will be Entirely Free. Tomorrow, this chapter in my life will be over.

-- Freder.

The Second Auction

Why am I the last to learn everything? The second auction featuring another chunk of my mother's collection is happening this week, Thursday and Friday. I haven't even seen a copy of the catalog (pictured above). I also asked Mr. Julia for a CD-ROM of every picture that they took, and I haven't seen that, either.

The auction website is here.

-- Freder.

The first of the auctions

Finding this on the web just now really made me sad. It's the notice for the first of three auctions to be held around my mother's estate. Click here for the listing. Be sure to look at the image gallery. It's coming right up, on December 7. What a day to choose.

Anyway, here's your chance to own a piece of the funhouse. Or for me to buy it back.

-- Freder.

The Torture-Proof Man

"Strange we hold on to things that have no grace or power
While death holds on to us much more with every passing hour

And all the time you thought it would last
Your life, your friends would always be
'Til they're drunk away or shot away or die away from you."

-- George Harrison

I'm proud to point out the obvious: you don't see many Family Portraits like this one. I found it the other night while going through a box full of stuff that the auctioneers had thrown together during those awful three days. I hadn't seen it in years.

It was taken at an Antique Show at the A________ Civic Center, probably thirty years ago. Mom always put up an elaborate booth, usually with the wooden "house" flats that she'd painted herself, but for a while she displayed this circus sideshow banner, and this one time we dressed for the occasion. My mother is the clown, I'm the Ringmaster, and my sister is in the lion costume.

This is actually quite appropriate, because for the last thirty years she's been lyin'.

Sam Pennington, the editor of the Maine Antique Digest, was tickled by our act, and he insisted on taking the picture. You can see it in full size at my Flickr account, just follow the link in the sidebar.

I still have the vest and tailcoat, but don't fit into them anymore, and my leather top hat tooled with a black rose was taken by the auctioneer's crew, sometime when I was distracted, along with my winter leather jacket! The clownish jacket that my mother is wearing is something that she made. I'm sure I still have it. And the lion costume is safe with me. Here he is in color:

 

The Torture-Proof Man sideshow banner is the real thing, a genuine relic from a nameless circus of long ago. I tried to find it in the weeks and months after Mom died, but had no luck. So I was actually pleased when the auctioneer's crew did find it, and laid it out on the front lawn. It wasn't lost after all. Perhaps it was under her bed. That wouldn't surprise me!

It's going to be auctioned off early next year, and I hope it gets a good home. I'm OK with that, because it was too big for my new home (and, psst! Don't tell the auctioneer or anyone else, but I withheld a second, smaller sideshow banner that will have a special place somewhere in my next life!)

Who was it said: "Damn it all. Damn everything but the circus."

-- Freder

V-V-V-Vampires!

"Giff mee yourrr FUR-nicherrr! Giff mee your MAIMaries! I VANT yourrrr SHTUFF!"

Tonight the owners of the secondary auction house are coming over to see what's left for them to take.

There's a significant amount in the two barns, but the main house is going to be an issue. They are going to want to pull things out of there now, whereas there are only a few things that I can allow them to take. I need for them to wait until after I'm done moving, then come by and pick up whatever is left behind. I won't know until I get in to the new house whether some of the furniture is coming with me or not.

There's a large green icebox in the kitchen that I can't use, but I still don't want them to take it now. It would be too disruptive, the whole kitchen would have to be moved, and besides which, my cats like to jump up there to look out the window. Until we're gone, it stays.

For my part, I am just GOD damn sick of strangers traipsing through my house, looking at everything.

In a seemingly-unrelated matter, it comes as a surprise to discover that I must be weather-sensitive. All it takes is one dismal, dreary day, and the black dog is once again on my doorstep.

Now I want to say a giant "thank you" to all of you. I check the stats every day, so I know you're out there, some of you from as far away as Denmark, Russia and Japan. I don't know why you're reading this drivel, but you are. And that means something to me. The only time that I don't feel completely alone is when I'm working on this crazy blog.

-- Freder

"Borrrrrn Freeeeeee!"

Quats freaking out in an empty house. Compare with earlier photo of the same space.

By Tuesday night I was emotionally and physically exhausted. As I got up and set about getting ready for the auctioneer and his crew to arrive for their third day of stripping the house, I felt as if this had been going on for months, years. It felt endless.

The cats no longer fought to get out when I locked them away.

My father was the first to arrive. His wife was already out looking at houses with the real estate agent. It was a quarter to ten before the trucks started showing up.

They had left bins of things in the front room of the house. I volunteered to help carry them out, but I had only made two trips before I completely fell apart and had to go hide in the barn.

My father found me there and hugged me.

By lunchtime, my father's wife was back. Mr. J_____ invited us three to lunch at a little restaurant in Albion. I am sure that he wanted to regale us with more of his stories, but the entire lunch was co-opted by my father and his wife, and her report of the houses she had seen.

My father picked up the tab.

Sometime in the middle afternoon Mr. J______ stopped sorting items and entered the house. I believe he was determined that this was going to be the last day of his involvement. He went down the basement and all through the house, searching for value. He opened every door, including ones that were off limits. More on that later.

Among the things he found that he seemed to want were the boxes of my old shop stock from the Duck Soup days, ten or eleven big boxes full of comic books dating from 1982 and earlier. I couldn't believe that he really wanted them, but this part actually pleased me: I had been wondering how in hell I was going to get rid of the things. They will be auctioned off as a lot, included as part of the estate.

At some point I found myself in the front hall, looking into the study. My desk and everything on it were there, my computer was on its stand as normal, the sofa was against the wall. Everything else was gone. When they had taken down the painting over the fireplace, all of the plaster had come down with it and was piled up on the floor and mantelpiece. On the outside wall, a horrible amount of water damage had been exposed. The same was true in the living room. Plaster and paint chips everywhere.

When I looked up the stairs, I was shocked to see that Pandy Bear and Whitey were both out. They were starting down the stairs. The front door was open behind me.

I leaped forward at them and they split. Whitey ran back into the bedroom. I shut the door behind him. Pandy had gone off towards the bathroom. I ran down and slammed the front door shut.

When I went back to look for Pandy Bear, I saw that the doors that are usually closed, leading all the way through the back of the house, to the back stairway and the entry hall downstairs, were all standing open. No sign of Pandy Bear.

I ran down through the house and got to the back door just as Pandy was stepping outside. As I reached for him he took a fright of my action and what was happening in the yard, and ran off at high speed for a big fatty-bounce of a cat. He ducked into the bushes and dove into the hole that goes under the barn. He was gone.

I screamed at the workers. "Is there anything we can do to help, Doug?" Bill G___. said. What a stupid question. I went around the house calling for Pandy, but there was no sign of him.

When the day started to wind down, Mr. J____ walked me through the upstairs of the house, which was largely untouched. He said the beds and other furniture up there were not worth much of anything, maybe $50 - $150 a piece. His brother in law would be around in two or three weeks to remove them for his auction, but Mr. J______ advised me to keep them unless I was certain that I would not need them. They would not bring much at auction, and would be more expensive to replace.

He left. His crew finished packing. By five o'clock I was signing the final contracts, twelve or thirteen pages. The trucks drove off. All the grass in the yard was mashed down. The place was quiet and empty.

Pooky wandered through the house crying her head off, trying to absorb what had happened. Patches was totally cool and copacetic.

There was no time to look for Pandy Bear. My father and his wife had made a six o'clock appointment to look at houses.

This time, I drove myself. We picked up the agent -- Sue's husband Harold -- and drove to a house I had never seen before, in a good neighborhood. It was a plain white house with a screened porch for my kitties, sitting on a crazy knoll across the street from the Catholic Church. The garage was in poor condition, but inside it was nice, if on the small side. Very small, actually. I was conscious of feeling cramped even though it was unfurnished. The bedrooms upstairs were a little bigger than the closets in my mother's house. Not all the furniture that I retained would fit. Still, I could envision myself and the cats there. It would be a little on the cozy side, but it could be done. But that horrible carpet would have to come up. and the green paint in the kitchen would have to go.

Then we went up to the cute brown-shingled house that I had been looking at for so long. This was different. It was beautiful inside, and just the right size. I quite liked it. But the porch had a bounce and a droop in it and the screens were loose, and the house needed a lot of work: new shingles. Structural work. This did not phase me as much as it did my father. The deal breaker for me was the bathroom situation. There was just one bathroom in the whole place, and it was a horrible cramped thing, too small for me to fit a cat tray inside. It would be impossible to sustain five cats.

So it appeared the small white house was my only option, and I began to feel a little depressed at the thought.

We dropped off Harold, a very nice man, at his office and went up to MacDonald's for dinner. There we talked over the options, and they decided to come over to the house the next day to help me work on it. They said that they would investigate the Victorian that was For Sale By Owner on their way out.

The niceness and the helpfulness of everything they were doing for me actually made me feel uncomfortable. I drove home in full dark with such mixed emotions, not all of them sad.

There was no sign of Pandy Bear.

Shock of the New

On Monday night I stood in what had once been my mother's bedroom and screamed.

Then I went around the house and put signs on things that I didn't want them to take.

The next day was more of the same, with a couple of differences. Taking a lesson from the day before, I tried to spend more of my time in the house, keeping an eye on the pickers. This sometimes involved having to be in more than one place at the same time. I began to be more assertive and proactive, trying to define some boundaries. After talking to Sue C_______, I decided to keep the dining room table and a set of chairs to go around it. I decided to keep the apothecary chest, as much so that I wouldn't have to open and go through all the drawers as for its usefulness as a piece of furniture.

Other than that, it was very much like the day before. Panic, work, running around, pictures and tears.

Sue helped me sort through some personal papers and clothes. She left around 3:30, and I thought, it's just me and them, now.

About half an hour later, my father appeared in the yard. I went up to him and said, "I didn't expect to see you today."

He said, "M_____ and I are going to take you to dinner."

It was a nice thought, but not what I needed or wanted. I needed the evening hours to start cleaning up the disaster area that was my house and to start making the place habitable again. I didn't want to leave my kitties alone when they would no doubt be freaking out. But this was not so much an invitation as another one of his non-negotiable demands.

Once again Whitey and Honey had gone into hiding under my bed and had to be coaxed out. Once again Honey went tearing down the stairs, but this time she did not even make it to the bottom. The front hall had been cleared out. She saw the empty space, spun around 180 degrees and shot past me into the dark hall that leads to the guest room. I called her and called her, but she would not show herself.

My father was saying that we had to go. I just had time to quickly get some fresh food out for the gang, and no time to change or clean up. My pants were covered with filth.

I said I'd follow them in my car. My father's wife said, in her heavily accented, sing-song voice, "No, we drive you."

I sat in the back seat of their SUV with my head against the glass, staring blindly through the window and not saying much of anything. They noted a new building that had gone in on the main road. Without knowing why I said it, I said, "There are a couple of nice houses for sale in W_________ with screened porches on them."

My father said, "That's what you said in your email last night." (I didn't remember typing it, or even sending him an email the night before, I had been in a zombie-like state,) Then he said, "Let's go look at them. You show me where they are and we'll take a look."

My heart sank. I thought, Oh, me and my damn mouth again. Now this is going to take even longer.

When we got to town I directed them onto C___ Street and then W______ Avenue. At the very end of C___ Street there is a house for sale with a finished apartment above the garage. Just around the corner there is a nice looking Victorian with a sign out front reading "FOR SALE BY OWNER." My father actually stopped the car, and his wife wrote down the number. I thought, What is going on here?

We drove up the avenue to a brown shingled house that I pass every day. They wrote down the name and number of the real estate broker.

At the restaurant, my father took out a real estate magazine that he had brought with him and began leafing through it. It was only then that I realized that my off-hand comment in the car had played right in to the subject that they wanted to speak to me about.

They are going to help me buy a house.

They leave for Nevada in late October, and want it done before then.

The Corpse Pickers

It was a bit of black humor on Monday morning to go to my Halloween countdown calendar and discover that the picture for that day was a witch's broom, sweeping stars.

I rose early, did my morning chores as normal, and at about 8:30 started rounding up cats.

Honey and Pooky went into the bathroom, Patches, Pandy Bear and Whitey went into my bedroom. Patches was the only one who resisted, but the minute I closed the door on them they realized that something was not right. As I popped each succeeding cat into the room, it got harder and harder to keep them inside while I shut the door.

I went out and sat at the table sipping on my ginger ale, waiting for them to come.

Sue C_______ was the first. She is the paralegal who works with my lawyer, and was there for moral and practical support. Then Mr. J_____ himself arrived. The head honcho. He likes to hear himself talk and immediately took command of the conversation with stories from his life.and profession. It went on for what seemed like a long time before the trucks began to pull in.

We stood at the back door and Mr. J______ made a discreet speech about my mother and about the task that his staff faced and how they were going to go about it. He had to keep starting over again because more people kept arriving, including my father and my lawyer, Joanne A_____, who as always gave me a big hug. I'm certain that I looked like I needed it.

From the bathroom window upstairs I could hear Pooky wailing. I had expected to see Honey sitting in that window, as it's one of her favorite spots, but she never appeared.

Then the show began. On that first day, it was my mistake to position myself in the yard to watch the things being carried out of the house. When the first item came out of the door I burst into tears and had to hide.

It started as a trickle and turned into a flood. Things were coming out so fast that I couldn't keep track. Soon I realized that they weren't just taking things of value -- they were taking everything.

They took her telephone. I caught this and saved it. They took her Dustbuster. They took her bag full of prosthetic socks. They took electric fans. I had told all of them that I still lived in the house and hoped they would leave me with some furniture and other practical things; either they didn't listen to me, or they had been told to clear the place out to the bare walls.

They took our broom. Why? They took my hammer. Why? I began prowling the yard, which with its tables full of things and boxes on the ground was beginning to look like a flea market, trying to find things and rescue them.

Inside the house was chaos. They toy man, Andrew, was ripping things down so carelessly that other objects were falling to the floor, where they broke or were stepped upon. He would pull things out of the arrangements, and if he decided not to take it he would toss it aside carelessly. Dolls lost their hats, arms, legs. Sets were broken up. It seemed to me that they didn't even know what they were looking at.

The rugs were all tossed out and the dirt underneath them began to spread absolutely everywhere. If it was clean when they started, it was filthy when they left.

I felt so powerless and every so often broke down in tears again.

Mr. J_____ was personally sorting every item that came out of the house, first deciding if he was going to take the item, or pass it off to his brother-in-law's auction house, then sorting what he wanted into groups.

Sue kept on trying to impress on me that as executor, I had the power to keep anything I wanted, but the message was largely not sinking in. I was too distracted and distraught.

Around noon I went upstairs to switch out Honey and Patchy. I first I couldn't find Honey at all, and thought, how could she disappear? It turned out that she was cowering in the bathtub, trying to make herself as small as possible. She looked up wt me with a terrified expression. I was going to switch out Whitey as well, so that he could get access the cat tray, but as soon as I closed the door on him he began wailing. I put him back in my room.

Throughout the afternoon it was more of the same. One half of the crew ripped things out of the kitchen and then moved into the dining and living room; the other half started in the hall and worked their way into my mother's bedroom.

They took the things that she had made even though I had asked them not to. So again I had to be on my toes, going from bin to bin, trying to save pieces of her from going.

And so on, as Mr. Vonnegut says.

They stopped taking things out of the house at four-thirty, and concentrated on processing what was already out. I went up and let the cats out.

Honey came out of the room and went shooting down the stairs like a rocket into the front of the house. Pandy Bear and Patchy were completely mellow. But Whitey was hiding under my bed and afraid to come out.

As I carried their food plates to the kitchen, I met Honey coming back. She was running at top speed through the half-stripped living room, keeping low to the ground as though she was trying to hide and run at the same time. When she saw me she stopped dead in her tracks and looked up at me with her eyes as big as saucers, as if to say, "What have YOU DONE??!!"

What, indeed, had I done? Something horrible, that I could never change.

What do you do at the end of the world?

The pictures say it all, really.

Before this week, the worst thing I've ever had to do is hold Sandy (a Palomino) and Pony while the vet put them down.

I'm not saying that this week was worse than that; but it's in that league.

I don't even know where to start. Likely it will take multiple posts to tell the story.

On Sunday I did a few last-minute things to get ready for the next day. I washed rugs and put clean ones down (this was a waste of time, as it turns out). I mowed the lawn. And in the evening, last thing before bed, I took the last few things out of my mother's room that I couldn't bear to part with: the big sock monkey, an animation cell from the Mickey Mouse cartoon Nifty Nineties, a page of original Bonzo Dog art by Geo. Studdy, the original art for a daily Mickey Mouse comic strip, a book of Sock Monkey photos that I bought for her at Christmas of last year, the talking Mickey Mouse advent calendar, and some very neat unisex shirts that I can wear.

It sounds like a lot, but as you can see from the "Before" photo, there was so much in the room that nobody would be the wiser.

I stowed these last items in my walk-in closet, and set a chair in front of it to indicate that it was off limits.

Of  course I'd been crying all day, and it wasn't the dignified kind of weeping, either. When I woke up that morning, Honey and Pandy Bear were both with me. I said to them, "This is the last day of the Universe as we know it, guys."

Of course they didn't understand. They would have to learn it the hard way.

That's the way to do it...

Monday morning around ten, and for at least two days afterward, the auction house will be at my home taking it all down. I know that during the day, my concern will not be about grief management, but on the logistics of six or more people all coming and going from the house through at least two entrances.

Their plan is to set up tables in the front yard (for this reason I have been unable to put out Halloween decorations). Two people will come into the house and start picking. Two people will act as runners, carrying the items out of the house to the two people manning the tables. These last will sort the items into lots, then pack and load everything onto the truck.

I've been trying to get the house ready for them, emptying drawers and more, but many of the desks and dressers and closets are actually inaccessible to me, which means that this will be an ongoing job. Also, I have no room to store anything that comes out of these places -- I will have to deal with it as space gradually opens up.

I have had to make plans of my own. Wanting not to worry all day about the cats getting out, I decided to lock them in my rooms upstairs, two in the bathroom and three in my bedroom, being mindful of matching the personalities to avoid cat warfare. I may have to switch them out a couple of times, as I'm not about to put a cat tray in my bedroom -- that's an idea I do NOT want to put into their heads! Likewise, Pooky will have to stay in the bathroom all day. I am not having her poop all over my sheets!

I plan on taking a lot of pictures. That's probably the best thing about digital cameras -- you don't have to worry about wasting film.

I know that it will be a long, busy day, and that I most likely will not have time to think much about what's happening. My father has said that he's going to be there for moral support; if he stays true to form, he will actually try to take over and run the operation. Then it will be my job to channel him in some other direction. That's all right. One more distraction for me.

My biggest fear is that my sister will find out what's happening and try to disrupt the process. I know that she wanted to lay claim to certain items, and until I found out that she was stealing from the house I would not have stood in the way of this. But things are different now. My position is that she made her choices and took them. She doesn't get to pick any more. She gave up that right. If she complains, I will happily tell her, "You're perfectly free to bid on things."

I had to swear my father to secrecy on the dates before I would tell him anything. I believe Monday will be safe. But her husband will be at home and he frequently drives down my road, and I fear that he or one of the kids will find out what's happening and convey the news to Claudia. This could make Tuesday or Wednesday a little sticky. If she turns up, I will ask her as politely as possible to leave. If she doesn't, I will call the state police.

At the end of the day, everyone will go away, and I will be left alone with the cats to clean up and deal with what remains. That's when I expect the tears to come.

A landscape of tears

For the last few days the weather has been bleak, gray, dismal and steamy. The air so full of moisture that the whole house is clammy to the touch. Yesterday I left the upstairs windows open just a crack, no more than an inch, so that the rain could not get in. When I arrived home at the end of the day I found that the walls and ceilings all the way out into the main hall were drenched, literally dripping with moisture. It looked as if the house was weeping.

I wiped it down with paper towels and closed all the windows and doors, which made the cats unhappy.

It's dark in there, too, and I can't seem to turn on enough lights to brighten the place. Damn these newfangled CFL lightbulbs anyway. In the commercials they claim to give off the same light as incandescent bulbs, but that is a bloody lie. When you switch on an incandescent bulb, you get instant clean white light. When you turn on a CFL bulb, you get swampland. A pale wan yellowish glimmer that takes forever to reach its full strength, and retains a yellowish cast even then.

When incandescent bulbs finally become illegal, I predict that we will have people jumping out of buildings like snowflakes.

In case you couldn't tell: On Sunday a mood descended on me that I have not been able to shake since, and weather like this is no help. Is it possible to build up an immunity to Prozac? Or can the drug just not cope with the added load of winter depression?

As they will not be used in evidence, I put the stolen items that I recovered back out into the house. I thought this would cheer me up. It didn't. It will all be gone, soon, anyway.

I started to do some writing for this blog, but words failed me. In trying to find something to say I want back through the emails I'd written in the weeks following my mother's death. This was a huge mistake.

I am not, in the vernacular, "dealing effectively with my feelings." Or anything else, really. It's tough to care when you know that a pack of strangers are going to come into your house and take your whole life apart.

The plunderers are coming. . .

The blows keep coming, fast and furious. On Friday I heard from the state police: as I suspected, they aren’t going to do anything about my sister’s thefts. And on Saturday I received the proposal from the Auction House.

They want to start ASAP, which I interpret as sometime within the next two or three weeks.

They plan on clearing the whole place out over a period of three days.

Although I knew it was going to be like this, seeing it in hard type was upsetting, to say the least.

I'll be left with a few sticks of furniture and some modern stuff that no one wants, yard-sale stuff, and a big empty mausoleum with just me and the cats to face the winter.

I won¹t even have a desk in my study. In fact, I have to clear all my stuff out (and off) of it so that they can take it out.

I know that it needs to be done, but I'm so not ready. A friend asked, would I be ready next year? No. But it would make the winter easier.

I have always hated and dreaded that terrible season. How bad will it be, alone in a big cold empty house? I don’t think there’s enough Prozac in the world to cover that prospect.

I would move somewhere else, but what to do about the outside cats?

"Is your journey really necessary?"

Yesterday was a dousing of cold water. I won't tell you about my reaction, because it's beginning to sound like a broken record, even to me. But I will ask the question:: if I'm hit this hard at this stage of the game, how in hell am I going to hold it together when they actually begin to pull the house apart?

The day started early with me once again trying to make the house presentable. This was made extra-difficult by Spooky, my incontinent cat, who was having a bad day, pooping absolutely everywhere as fast as I could clean it up. I had to change the towels on the living room sofa.

I was expecting one guy, a representative of the auction house. Instead, when they finally found me (about 15 minutes late), two guys got out of the car. And told me that Mr. J______, in person, would be coming along, too. I told them that once we got into the house it was going to be single file all the way. They didn't believe me at first. Then they stepped inside, and fell silent real fast.

The thought of these three big men somehow navigating that space gave me the willies, but it didn't seem to faze the cats at all. Patchy sat quietly on the top of the davenport and watched them without much interest.

This is the third time I've had to give a tour of the house to strangers. Picking at my mother's ashes. It took about an hour. By the time they left I really, really wanted to add some vodka to my orange juice. But I don't do that anymore.

Then a rush to get into work, then another rush to get downtown by 11:30 for my appointment with Dr. Shrinker (I should blog about how the Mandatory Counseling thing came to happen), only to find that I had the wrong day and the wrong time. She was very nice about it, her schedule was clear, so she saw me anyway.

I was able to report the reduction in my drinking. She wants me to completely go cold turkey, but I'm not quite ready to go that far. We talked about the day that the auctioneers will come to clean the house out. It was the first time I've broken down in front of her.

She said that I should look at it differently. My mother's things will be cared for, and will go to people who will enjoy them,

I took pictures in the closed guest room before bedtime. Lots of Steiff and paper Halloween in there. Some of it will be staying with me.

-- Freder.

The Migration Habits of the blogger

The business of removing the things that belong to me out of the main part of the house is mostly done, that is, insofar as I am willing to go.

I'm not going to pull the computer out of the office, or clear the desk of my books and papers, I¹m not going to take the television and DVD players out of the kitchen, after all I do still live here and I have to be able to function as normal.

But most everything else, the books that were mine, a few puppets that I played with as a kid, a Steiff clown that was mine, things that I bought or was given -- most of that is now in my rooms.

It's getting crowded.

[Note to self: don't forget Pierre the Bear, or the Steiff Snowman puppet. They're yours, too.]

To make room for all of this meant clearing out my walk-in closet that has not been walk-inable for some time. Thanks to the VHS project that has opened up lots of shelf space in my bedroom, I was able to move all the DVDs in the closet out to other places.

But there were things that just had to go. Three enormous boxes of the comic book that I self-published way back in the early '80s had to be taken out. They are sitting in the barn right now, awaiting a judgment on their fate. I do not know if Goodwill would take them. If not, the only other option is for the recycling man to carry them away forever. There's the fruit of another dream going down the drain.

Like my mother, I had piles and boxes of magazines and newspapers, and it was time to give myself the same treatment I¹d given her in the kitchen. All my old MacAddict magazines, all my old issues of The Buyer¹s Guide for Comic Fandom (later morphed into The Comics Buyers Guide when it was bought out by Krause), catalogs and many other things of equal status, all had to go.

This time it was eight big, heavy garbage bags full.

When it was done I could walk into my closet again, and I had room for my things from the house.

I have also started choosing some artifacts from the estate that I cannot bear to part with. For the most part, these are not so much valuable as they are important memories to me. A set of oversized Babar books, and a doll of Babar as Father Christmas that I gave her as a present. A small, modern Mickey mouse figurine in Halloween gear. Her very new Sock Monkey Jack-in-the-Box. A couple of fanciful figures that she bought from Dollmasters. A Mickey Mouse soft car that I gave her for her birthday years ago -- she laughed and laughed. A Popeye lamp. A Halloween lantern and some other cheap Halloween things that we shopped for together in the last years of her life -- Halloween was always a fun time for us, more on that later.

These things and my own are slowly mixing together in my closet. They will go with me wherever I go from here.

But it's all come with a price. I was doing well emotionally until the last meeting with my lawyer. Reality is coming to Wonderland, and the two things are mutually exclusive.

Lately, I find myself crying all the time.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. . .

It will begin soon. The auctioneer and the real estate appraiser have both been contacted. The valuations will begin next week. They may even begin to take things out of the house.

I am not ready.

I nearly lost it right there in the lawyer's office while we were calling the auction house.

All too soon, my sister will get her wish, and everything that was Mom's (and my!) life will be pulled apart and carted away. I may only be able to save a few pieces. I guess that's the reason why I've gone crazy with the digital camera. Day and night, I've taken over 2,000 photos in and around that place.

I've been told to start pulling the things that are actually mine out of the main part of the house and either put them in my rooms or get one of those self-storage units and begin moving it out.

And I need to winterize my mother's bathroom, so that I can close down that whole wing of the house.

This involves moving one of the cat boxes from her bathroom to mine, upstairs and on the other side of the house. I have no idea how that's going to work! Honey believes that she owns the upstairs and chases most everyone else away, especially Patchy. How will they react when I close the door and that whole space becomes unavailable to them?

I worry about Patchy in particular. She still likes to sleep on Mom's bed, and I believe she uses that litterbox exclusively. Honey has her so terrified that she never even ventures into my wing of the house.

It's going to be a horrifying change for all of us. I fully expect to be in the house through this winter. I have the right to live there for five years. But I can't stay in a big mausoleum like that over the long term. By next springtime, if we all make it, I expect I'll be doing my best Fagin imitation to the cats: "Come on boys, we're changin' lodgings!"

But what of the three outside cats? They are probably not adoptable, even by me. What am I going to do? Where are we going to go?