What Can I Do to Help?

What can I do to help?"  Are there words more welcome to the ears of a hard-working person?  It is far better to pose the offer this way rather than merely "Can I help?" which is likely to be met with, "Oh no, I'm fine, thanks."  It is saying:  I am here to help.  Tell me what to do.  I wrote this on our kitchen blackboard about a month ago, when the matter of "Settling the Estate" was starting to consume more and more time, especially for Martha. 

I don't mean to congratulate myself, because I have sometimes been a reluctant helper and, from time to time, out of sorts.  But if you write that on the blackboard, if you ask that question, then you have to be prepared to do whatever you are asked to do.  Martha made a wise decision a couple of weeks ago when, unable to sleep, she made a list of all the things that needed to be done to prepare for an estate sale this weekend and then place the house on Hickory Street on the market, ranging from cleaning the windows to gathering together all the yard art to moving the barbeque grill around to the front porch.  It was well received by her brothers and her sister, who quickly began checking off the things that they wanted to do and could do.

I was asked on Monday to set this tent up, which Martha had ordered from some (I thought) dubious company for less than a hundred dollars, a fraction of the cost of renting a tent for several days.  I say "dubious" because it appeared to have been manufactured in another country where labor is cheap and detailed instructions are shown on a single piece of paper entitled "Simple Assembly Directions" and only in pictures.  I probably would not have been as out of sorts had I not run four miles that morning and then found myself out in the front yard most of the time, in blazing hot sun, sorting through a hundred different tent poles and attempting to decipher the exact sequence in which this tent was to become a reality. 

It did come together, patiently and gradually, and I confess that I ended up feeling some admiration for the way in which the poles snapped firmly together and simple loops of Velcro were used to fasten the sides (with it's faux-pane windows).  All for less than a hundred dollars, and using pictures rather than a thousand words.  Certainly much to be preferred to the instructions for the battery-powered “tap light” which I installed in the pantry last week, which were written on a large piece of paper unfolded from a tiny square, in approximately sixteen different languages and in a font so tiny that I had to use my reading glasses and a magnifying glass. 

Yesterday Martha's brother Scott and I made another trip to the landfill with more things too worn or broken to be sold in the sale.  We must have made twenty trips to the landfill so far, and with the right attitude, it is very satisfying.  Scott was already skilled at backing a trailer attached to his truck when we began this work, but now he is an expert.  And we have all enjoyed spending time with one another, which in a way is part of the healing process.  We find ourselves chuckling over this or that tool or contraption that Scott's Dad, an inveterate tinkerer, had fabricated.  Or remembering something sweet about his Mom.  

Martha has been arriving early in the morning and is working very hard.  She has placed ads in both newspapers, priced nearly everything, and has displayed it all with the skill that can only have come from growing up working in her Mom and Dad's store as a child.  On the front porch, toys are on one table and antiques on another, and so on.

I completed my four-mile run up Bearpen Mountain this morning - we have been running on alternate days this week - and then came by just before lunch.  We enjoyed sandwiches that we had made and which we ate sitting in rocking chairs out on the front porch where we have visited with Martha's Mom and Dad over the years.  Then we moved some furniture downstairs, hung some pictures; I stopped in surprise to look at the family room, which definitely looks like it is ready for a sale this weekend.

It is a poignant time and a difficult thing to do, emptying out a house of a lifetime of things once held precious by those who lived there, distributing them among children and grandchildren, donating some to the local thrift store Mountain Findings, throwing some of it away, and selling the rest so that it can be enjoyed and put to use by others.  But in the end I think it will be therapeutic.  Now we are eager to see if the sale will be well-attended despite the forecast afternoon thundershowers and our demand that those who attend wear face masks and practice what social distancing they can.