Wrapping Up a Life

A few days ago, my next-door neighbor left his house for the last time. He is 84 and had lived there with his wife for 46 years. She dealt with a long illness and died almost two years ago, then my neighbor soldiered on alone until experiencing a medical problem. His daughter flew in and helped make a plan for how to live out his remaining time; they decided together that he should relocate to be near her on the opposite coast. People in town feted our iconic golfing neighbor the best we could given the pandemic, but what do you do when someone who has spent his life here is leaving and will never be back? Any gesture seems too little, certainly efforts with distanced waves and faces obscured by masks felt flat.

Nevertheless, the appointed day came and, before I was up, he had left. My neighbor is gone now, having left the history of his adult life behind. His marriage was spent in that home, his young family raised to maturity within its comfort. There must have been many happy memories, but difficult ones, too. His son passed away as an adult, his wife died after suffering for years. How did he go about wrapping up the entire arc of that life? How was he able to turn and walk away?

In the afternoon of my neighbor’s departure, workers from a junk removal service arrived to empty his house. They worked for a few hours, steadily tossing chairs, tables, mattresses, books, fixtures, files, and more into at least two enormous trucks. The men did nothing wrong, they were just doing their job and being efficient about it, but the indifferent disposal of the everyday items of someone else bothered me. Snap, just like that, a life dismantled.   

It is not my story, it is not my loss, but it still pierced my heart.

I helplessly watched Chris embark on his own quest to “wrap up” his life. His words. He looked through boxes of pictures, filed documents into neatly labeled folders, spent time with the people he loved, gave hugs. He had to leave his home knowing he would not return, that he was going off to die. Still, Chris soaked in every drop of life he could until eventually he had to take his leave.

Now there are still signs Chris lived in this house, but his handwriting is fading. His bathrobe doesn’t smell like him anymore. Dust gathers on his electronics that I don’t know what to do with. The dates on his files seem shockingly long ago. Family pictures with the four of us look outdated because three of us have aged. If our house went on the market like my neighbor's, nobody looking around it would know that the rocking chair was Chris’s spot. An outsider could not possibly know that Chris ordered the shed to match the house and yet it arrived a different color, so he painted it with the kids, first writing their names on the walls before methodically and meticulously finishing the job.

My neighbor’s departure and efforts to wrap up his life provoked familiar pangs of desolation. What happens to the joy, the pain, the lessons learned, the struggles, and the love once the people who experienced them are no longer? Is it all just over, so meaningless that a full life can be reduced to a few truckloads of trash that nobody else wants? Does a life just combust, disintegrate, and settle into a box of ashes, devoid of feeling?

I find no answers when I search for reasons and meaning out of desperation like this. Instead, when I stop trying so hard there is sometimes peace to be found at quiet times.

Love doesn’t live in a house, it cannot be fully expressed by words or even kind eyes, love doesn’t care if the whole world knows about it or just the beings involved. Love cannot even be contained by a living body. Instead, love is steadfast, ethereal, and mysterious.

Love was, is, and will be.