Rndmrunner Writing Prompts - 4. Chapter 4

I took a deep breath and forced myself to get back to the task at hand. More and more, I hated being in this room. The job was two thirds done but was getting harder. I had save the “best” for the “last”. The easy things were already taken care of.

I decided to tackle the closet next. A rack, buried in ties hung from the inside of the door. My dad, always a man’s man, was also a bit of a dandy. Ties were one of his vanities. It would have been nice to keep a few but let’s face it, I rarely wore ties and when I did I wouldn’t have worn his. These fit nicely with his stout form and tailored three piece suits but wouldn’t work for me. These days even in a suit I didn’t wear a tie. So into the bags for the Thrift shop they went. As the rack cleared I saw his two favourite ascots, you know those short wide ties worn with an open necked shits and seen in movies from the fifties and early sixties on “playboys” and “bachelors”. That was my father in casual wear. I set them aside and then finally added them to the bags, admitting that I would never wear them. I had to clear this all out.

I thought of Dad smiling, watching me become the packrat that I had berated him about. Was it a gift from him or a curse? Dad kept everything. Small wonder, the war had disrupted their lives of both my parents families and they had had to start from scratch afterwards. We were always well provided for and never lacked but God Forbid that you wasted something (another helping uneaten, paper half used, a fridge door left ajar while you made your decision – it didn’t matter. Waste was the greatest sin.

I remembered back years ago: Martin and I had only been together for a year or so then, and we were helping my folks clean the garage. Actually we helping my Mum, my Dad was standing guard to ensure that nothing still useful might be trashed. At first Dad had made a case for every single item to be discarded but he had finally relaxed and was letting work proceed. Martin had just finished carrying a bin out to the car for disposal, when he returned with an old radio tucked under his arm. “I thought we might use this, it’s vintage” he said, refusing to meet my mother’s glare. “SEE I told you it was useful” was my Dad’s immediate response. I took the coward’s route and left Martin on his own to face the wolves and went with my brother to get more bins. Martin’s status as my Mum’s second favourite daughter in law was on shaky ground that day.

I continued to pack things away and put the room back together. The room at least looked like a bedroom again with the prescriptions cleared away and the hospital equipment returned. It just didn’t look like the bedroom that my folks had spent the last fifty years in anymore.