- My house is sold.
To be more precise, it’s under contract, the appraisal was completed, the inspection finished and we negotiated a post-inspection agreement.
I have three weeks to completely empty the house before the closing date.
It just got real.
Yesterday, I took down all of our wall art and packed it up for Zack.
It felt like I was tearing pieces of Ellen off of me and discarding them. It was much harder than I had expected.
We paid next to nothing as we built our collection from hand me downs and inexpensive prints, but we loved our eclectic assembly of artwork.
- Three impressionist prints her father purchased from a street artist in France over 50 years ago.
- Two “lady” paintings of a flapper era woman smoking and drinking on the town.
- A vibrant colorful painting of an old Spanish street.
- A foreboding Renaissance era painting of a shepherd with his lambs
- A dozen pieces from Zack ranging from a line drawing of him pensively starting at his sister’s face to brilliant colorful close ups of flowers in our garden.
- The two hooked rugs that Ellen made – a mountain desert scene and a snow capped peaks scene.
- Sculptures, pottery, glasswork and more that filled our china cabinet and every flat surface of our home
We assembled this collection over a lifetime – both hers and mine.
In family photos over the years, I could always recognize one of our paintings or prints in the background.
They told the story of our lives together.
But I cannot take it with me on the road.
Dust, sand, heat and condensation are all issues. Space is limited. Paintings and prints will be ruined. Sculptures will shatter.
I threw away the beach print from our first vacation to Hilton Head. I tossed the Jazz Preservation Hall sign from when we visited Liz in New Orleans so many years ago. So many of these have meaning to nobody but me.
But they were our art.
Nobody else would want them.
Tomorrow Zack takes the best of our collection to his home.
The ones he chooses to keep will become a part of his life story.
I told him to get rid of any he doesn’t want. They are part of my past life – a life to which I cannot return.
The walls are now bare. The color is gone.
The joy and warmth from my home is being removed piece by piece.
First my wife. Then my cats. Now our art.
In two weeks all of our furniture will be gone.
I am ready to go. This is no longer home to me.
I am taking a few pieces of art with me on the road.
- The haunting “homeless man under the bridge photo” that Zack gifted me from his first series.
- A Parisian street vendor sketch that either Ellen or her father bought long ago.
- The tiny colorful painting of a villa in Spain
- A heavy clay sculpture that Ellen made in high school that I called “Jay’s Head” (because it looked like her father would look 25 years after she made it!)
- The raven sculpture that I picked up from the Three Rivers Art Festival over 25 years ago.
I will never forget my wife, our lives together, or the love we shared. I don’t need anything to remind of this.
Without my wife around, our belongings are a painful reminder of her absence.
And yet this morning I realized I want to hang onto some of this art. Just like I am taking a small set of photos with me. And the nightgown that Ellen frequently wore when we first met.
These all take up valuable space in my rig and in my head. They aren’t practical. They may not survive the rigors of the road.
But they were a part of Ellen, a part of our lives together and are now a part of me.
I am not ready to go into this next phase of my life with bare walls.