Nice Things
We moved into our house in December 2009. It was brand new. Now, nearly 13 years later it’s starting to look a little frayed around the edges. The front and back doors need painting as does the carport and parts of the porch, especially the dog run. The front gate needs paint. There’s a watermark on the ceiling of the bathroom to paint as soon as soon as the patch to the roof line gets made. I just replaced the toilet seat. There’s a stone wall I built that is falling down but needs a new foundation before it goes back up. There’s fence work to be done. The area behind the workroom need cleaning.
I imagine all houses go through this sort of long slow decline, and it accelerates if you let it go because you get to the point where you hardly know where to begin. For me, however, it will be the doors because that’s easy and that’s where my wife would have started, but the point being that it can get away from you. Just like in life or a marriage. You lose a little control. Say something snarky. Get a little pissy. React badly to a simple question. It’s easy and the happy fellow becomes the angry fellow and people suffer. Oddly enough, people will make excuses. That’s just how he is. They make excuses for me now. Well, your wife had dementia and died. Or it’s too hot.
It sort of saddens me to think of all the stupid things I did when I was young and when I was married and how I made life difficult for the people I loved. But I got most of them fixed and figured out how to change. And now I’ve got to get busy with this house, because I have also learned that if you notice what’s going on and embrace it and then get busy putting it back together, you can have nice things. And this house is a nice thing, and I’m going to keep it that way.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale