One of my tenants died. She rented an efficiency apartment in my vaguely odd Spanish-style stucco building incongruously located in Italian Village. She was a holdover tenant when I purchased the place and probably had lived there for 20 years. The low rent fit her disability income which frequently required relatives or a church fund to supplement. She suffered from diabetes and a respiratory ailment. Our communication was limited to her polite requests for extensions to pay, dealing with unpaid heat bills and a few maintenance issues. A couple years ago, I entered the premises for the first and only time to examine a problem with the kitchen floor so I knew what I was in for when the responsibility for dealing with her stuff fell on me after her relatives declined the opportunity to salvage any remnant of their family member’s worldly remains.
She’d spent the last four or five months in the hospital and rehab center. When I entered the apartment, it was like shedding the first rays of swirling dusty light upon an ancient undisturbed tomb. As I entered, my attention was drawn to the fake wood plaque sitting on the end table that she probably had picked up at a truck stop or Cracker Barrel. It read ‘God Bless This Mess’. The kaleidoscopic clutter strewn over every surface from the floor to the furniture attested to her faith in having received absolution for a surrender to chaos that could only have been granted by divine indulgence. Like a bird’s nest built with scraps, discards and fragments, her cramped abode was covered with the loose change of everyday existence. It wasn’t garbage, just a timeless accumulation of cheap junk and medical supplies.
Presiding over this sepulcher of her meager relics, like funerary figurines perched along the back of the couch and cushioned chair, stationed in numerous shelves and lying in wait in cabinets and drawers, was a lifelong collection of stuffed bears. Like an immortal corps of ursine sentinels, their glassy eyes had been fixed in unwavering stares on a dark and soundless abandoned chamber, patiently searching for their adoring queen. I stuffed her anthropomorphous family into their own trash bags in hopes that I would be able to get someone to adopt them but after repeated calls to her brother and a post on Craigslist failed to turn up any takers, they disappeared with most of the remainder of her possessions, carried away by the unseen hands of Bulk Pickup and alley scavengers.
It seemed so sad that everything this woman owned, her small solitary world, commanded no more respect than unwanted trash, so, partly out of respect to her, I tried to put as much of it as I could to some good use. I salvaged a few things for myself and let the guy who was rehabbing the place for me take what he wanted. I boxed and bagged up her clothing along with all the plastic, glass, paper and cardboard I could find and stuffed it all in my car for a trip to the recycling center conveniently situated beside the Volunteers of America store. It was raining as I pulled into the shopping center and I parked near the door on the side of the VOA building designated for drop offs.
I sprinted the short distance to the dry area under the small awning that jutted out from the store’s massive wall and rang the door bell. While waiting for a response, I looked over at my car to check on my young companion in his car seat. It was my day of the week to take care of him while his mother was at work. As I stood there, confined in the little invisible box that was protecting me from the rain, I could see his shaggy blonde hair and beautiful smiling face peeking through the rear side window. Here I was, almost sixty years old, having spent the last 4 or 5 years living alone, my own son and his childhood a distant, impenetrable memory, and now, suddenly I’ve opened my door to a young woman and her child, filling the house with crying, joyful screeches and adorable babbling, floors littered with food, toys, clothes, plastic containers and various kitchen utensils, a state of perpetual upheaval, sharing everything I have left to give, once again loving and being loved. I looked up at the towering wall composed of three dimensional bricks designed to undulate like concrete waves. I rang the bell again.
