Finally Got the House Sold

The house on South 2nd.

After many months of suffering, anguish, and mayhem, my grandparents’ house is finally sold! Thanks to the soaring costs of health care for the elderly, we were forced to put the old homestead up for auction to help pay for grandma’s ongoing medical care at a local nursing home. It’s sad to let go of a place that’s been in the family for 66 years, but it needed a lot of work, and no one in the family was in any position to buy it.

It was a long, busy day.

What we found astonishing was the amount of crap my grandparents accumulated over their lifetimes. We found whole sets (with an “s”) of fine china; one set was wrapped in newspaper dated from 1944! I collect old maps, so I got to inherit a multitude of old atlases and road maps; my prized finds are a Pennsylvania State Highway Map from 1937, and a visitor’s map to Philadelphia from the Democratic National Convention of 1936. It required two auctions to get rid of it all; one in late August, and the other was yesterday.

One good thing that came of this was the workout I got moving furniture, tables, and running items up stairs from a holding area in the basement. When our role was finished, which was about one in the afternoon, I got to take a hike through the town to blow off steam, and soak up the beautiful mid-October day.

This sums up the whole experience: "'arrowing"

Now that the saga of the house is finished, my dad can focus completely on his recovery; and although I don’t need to help with the house anymore, the challenge remains to take care of his needs while trying to squeeze in my own. Even today, there was no respite; we had to resume the weekly ritual of visiting my grandmother at the assisted-living facility, and breaking the news to her that her house was no longer hers. In a way, though, her suffering with Alzheimer’s seemed to be a blessing; her response was, “What’s for lunch?”