"What do you want to do with this?"

Two months ago I received a statement from my 401K.   Since I left MCL in April, 2009, I have had access to that money.  It halved in value during the recession, and I also had been using it to cover D's debts, my tripled mortgage, and a joint lifestyle that was beyond my means.  In the past year the trickle of funds became a hemorrhage.  Now, it's almost gone.

I'm still unemployed and so is D.  My  unemployment runs out in June, and the vacation rental apartment is bringing in half what it did last year.  While I have cut travel and entertainment expenses by two-thirds, my mortgage cannot be reduced and I am paying over $600 a month in health insurance.

I face the truth:  I can no longer afford my home or my lifestyle.

To stave off foreclosure, I either need to find a new source of income or sell my home.  I cannot face the latter yet.  Since the job search is looking bleaker every day, I have to find income somewhere else.  I decide on more radical measures.  Although I've reduced my living expenses as far as I can and still remain married, I have one more option available to me:  I will rent my home, live in the vacation studio rental,  and downsize my possessions.

I start planning the downsize. Step 1 is a heads' up to family and friends.  Is there anything in my possession that they have coveted or treasured over the past few years?  It's theirs.  Do they know of anyone looking for a nice home, complete with live-in landlords and pets?  Bring 'em on.  Etc.

The support comes pouring in. I receive names of potential house-mates and professional estate sale managers.  I get offers of help, a breathtaking gift of money, affirmations, condolences, and advice.  I feel loved.  I close my eyes to the emotional reality of this process, and I dive in.  I tell myself that this is what I've needed for years, a chance to de-clutter and get out from under my possessions.  I have let the sheer mass of things and responsibilities overwhelm me, and nothing gets done.  Now I will be able to find what's left and spend my time productively.  Or so I hope.

The Master Shedroom

I begin a modest remodel to create a viable living space so I can continue to live in my home.  I locate a renter for the upstairs.  The revised plan is to live in the downstairs, sleep in the newly refurbished shed, and share the kitchen with the renter.  The downstairs bathroom now has a shower.

The downsize is a bigger problem.  D is a hoarder, and I am not far behind.  We realize that we cannot face the choices inherent in managing a moving sale, and I cut a deal with an estate sale professional.  For 35% of the take, she will take care of everything. We painfully decide which rooms will be off-limits during the sale and which large pieces of furniture will be sold.  She begins contacting dealers and valuing our possessions.  We start the even more painful process of deciding about the "little stuff."

From the start it's a nightmare.  There is so much.  I have lived here close to 20 years, Dave close to 7. The remodel is still happening, and that slows down the process of moving stuff.  We start piling things up, but I really don't want to handle it all twice, nor to live out of boxes.  I want to go through the house, choose what to keep, and put it all away in the non-sale rooms.  D wants to go through and decide what to toss, and what to sell.  It's a radical difference in mind-set, and our discussions are accompanied by bouts of frustration, anger, hysteria, screaming, and tears.  I won't say who provided which, but I do start making plans to be gone during the sale itself.

Although I am adamantly not answering D's constant question, "What do you want to do with this?" I cannot escape the reality.  I am doing more than selling off possessions.  I am jettisoning my life.  I have been a musician, artist, craftsman, traveler, reader.   Soon I will no longer have the means to be any of these things, or at least not at the previous level.  I am selling sheet music and CDs, instruments, darkroom equipment, frames, yarn, craft supplies, paper for origami, junk for "found-object" art, material and scraps, books, luggage, maps.  I have also been a friend, lover, daughter, sister, niece.  Everywhere I look I see gifts and memorabilia from these beloved people. Soon I will only have my memories.  Some of these things are worth real money, some only carry emotional value, but all are worth more than any price the professional will put on them.  Do I really want to trash my life?

I cannot be totally ruthless:  I put snapshots and letters into boxes which I stash in the attic and under the stairs.  Some day I will have to cull these as well.  But 90% of the rest must go now.  My wall space, closets, drawers, and table tops are going away, and I cannot store all the art, dishes, and clothing.

The last two weeks have been spent walking from room to room, sitting at dressers, piling things into bags and boxes.  It's a little schizophrenic:  in the rooms dedicated to the sale, I am bagging and tagging things I want to keep.  In the rooms that will be off-limits, I am bagging and tagging things I cannot keep.  D keeps forgetting which process goes with which room, and then he keeps forgetting that the stuff I'm leaving in drawers or stacking on surfaces is going into the sale.  He says, "What do you want to do with this?"  I say, "Put in the sale."  He says, "Who would buy that (paperclip, broken glass,  cord to lost electronic item)?"  I say, "That's up to the professional."  He says, "What do you want to do with this?"

I snap.  I don't want to do anything with "this." I don't want to sell my memories. I don't want to sell junk, I don't want to sell valuables,  I don't want to determine which is which.  I want to pack a small bag and walk away, move in with my cousin in London, curl up in a fetal position.  But, then I discover my expired passport.  If I had snapped two weeks earlier, I could have taken that escape route.  Now, I'm trapped in the U.S.  Besides, I don't really want to leave my husband.  I just want him to stop asking me, "What do you want to do with this?"

It's down to zero hour.  I have stopped talking about why we are doing this, why we need to let the professional do her job, why we cannot keep taking things back out of the sale.  D has stopped saying, "But we might use this."  He snatches up one last pile of games he cannot bear to lose, and finally he's done.  I wander around the rooms, looking for the mates to 4 shoes.  I cannot find them, and I hope they have not been swallowed up by the bags that are in the dumpster I've rented.  I do find D's "Rogowski box," a handcrafted wooden piece of art, given to him for his first wedding, and I rescue it.  I know this should not be in the sale.  But there is so much else.  Did anything else inadvertently make its way to the sale tables?   Conversely, is there anything else in the off-limits room that could be sold?   I decide that this way lies madness, and I limp down the stairs (I tweaked my knee shoving heavy boxes with my foot.)

Now I am up in Port Angeles, staying with cousins while hordes of strangers tramp through my house, my life, and my memories, devaluing it all in the interest of getting a good deal or a quick sale.  I have been trying to not think about it, and my worry over Carbon makes that easy.  Her laryngeal paralysis kicks in during times of stress, excessive heat, or excitement, and she spent the entire drive up here panting without cessation, sides heaving, laboring after oxygen. I don't know which stressor is coming in to play, but I am facing the fact that yet another loss is imminent.  I sit with my arms around my sweet old dog, sobbing.  I don't know which loss I am weeping for,  but I do know that grief will not disappear with my things.