The stuff we leave behind

Cleaning up after my father's death was an eye-opening experience. Someday each of us will die and others will go through our stuff and pitch out much of it, save a few things to remember us buy, sell what they can. That scripture about not storing up our treasures on earth has a clearer meaning for me. After helping my siblings and sisters-in-law nearly fill an enormous dumpster, I think I should go home and clean out my own drawers, closets and the garage. So much meaningless junk we hang on to.

Those who worked outside got bruised and cuts from the work. Jim and I went and got tetanus booster shots to protect us, because we figured it had probably been 10 years since our last one.

My father had started widening the porch in front of the house, but the job was incomplete, like every other project he started. My brothers laid out some of the concrete slabs they found to make steps of a sort from the lawn to the porch, but they tended to wobble, only marginally better than stepping onto the mess of rocky, weedy, trash-strewn ground to either side.

After my brothers left and went home to Oklahoma and Arkansas, I dug up the ground and laid the slabs into the ground to make a pathway. As I dug, I uncovered many of dad's rocks that he collected through the years, and used them to line the path. I used bricks, also just found lying around, to cover up the exposed insulation along the base of the wall. There wasn't anything any of us could do about the equipment and lumber piled to one side of the door, but all-in-all, the yard and porch are less of an eyesore, safer and more inviting than they were.