Finding the End

My father-in-law passed away this summer, and my wife and I have spent the last six months cleaning out his house in preparation for its sale. He was no pack rat, but there was still a life’s worth of stuff to get rid of. Some choices were easy and obvious. All those old medical bills and bank statements? Recycle them. The food in the fridge? Throw it away. The dining room table and TV? Sell them on Offer Up. The old books, cutlery, plates, folding chairs, lamps, and rugs? Donate to Value Village.

Then there were the not-so-obvious choices. That first day when we were taking stock of all he had, I wandered down to one of the spare bedrooms and opened its closet. There, piled floor-to-ceiling, were sixteen cases of freshly-minted self-published books. “What the hell are we going to do with these?” I thought.

We couldn’t sell them. We knew about selling books. It’s a job neither of us wanted. We couldn’t donate them to a used bookstore. No one wants 200 copies of a book about the origins of curses and sexual language. If we gave them to Value Village, they’d just throw them away. We couldn’t just throw them away. I mean, we could – but they were so new, and so neatly packed, and had meant so much to him. But if we didn’t sell them or donate them or throw them away, what the hell were we going to do with them?

As the house slowly emptied out, I kept thinking about those books. They remained in the closet for the first four months, a dense, intractable block of problem. Occasionally, I’d wander down to the bedroom and stare at them, hoping they’d tell me what to do. Each time, I thought, “I’ve got nothing.” So, I’d close the closet and go find something else to get rid of.

Eventually, we needed to clean the house, and so we moved the books to the garage, where they stood packed together in a corner like refugees. I didn’t like to look at them. Looking at them felt like all the problems in my life I’d avoided and hoped would solve themselves. I told myself we didn’t have to figure out what to do with them until we actually sold the house, and that could take a while.

The house sold three days after it went on the market. We now had four weeks. Were we really just going to throw them away? I guess we were just going to throw them away. Then Roz, my father-in-law’s assistant for many years, came by to get her last paycheck. We mentioned the books and how we were going to throw them away.

“No, no, no,” she said. “Don’t do that. I’ll take them.”

“You’ll take them?”

“Yes, I’ll take them. Maybe I’ll sell them.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I’ll really take them.”

I didn’t quite believe her until I was loading the books into her car the other. It was too easy. It was far easier than the problem had once seemed difficult – impossible even. Yet here I was piling the last case into the back seat of her Toyota, thanking her and waving goodbye as she drove away, the end of a story I never thought would finish itself.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com