King Tut’s Tomb

My mother and father were both still alive when I started packing the contents of their homes, so my plans initially focused on storing their property. Managing their former possessions as my own came later. My mother had a three-bedroom home and I was the one moving in during summer 2019, so the plan was different from when I packed my father’s apartment in 2015.

As my father faced his life’s end, I persuaded him to enter a care facility while I moved the contents of his apartment into storage, telling him and myself it was just temporary, just until I could find him a suitable apartment where he could stay “home” with a live-in caregiver.

I hired a moving company, and spent a week packing up the three-room apartment, with assistance from four true friends who earned my undying gratitude. I located a 10-by-20 storage unit for my father’s belongings. I thought I might need a second one but the movers managed to cram everything in, up to the ceiling, barely room to close the door.

Even then the task wasn’t done, because I only contracted with the movers for my father’s apartment, and neighbors informed me — when the movers were almost finished — how my father had taken over all available apartment space not occupied by other renters. Several pieces of patio furniture, all his, sprawled along the walkway, and the neighbors acted like they couldn’t wait to be rid of it. The man had also taken over the apartment’s four-car garage, all of it, for his cars and whatever else he wanted to park in all available garage space. Apparently the manager and other tenants let him do it.

Since I’d already given notice to vacate, my solution was to rent a van and spend more days transporting the remaining furniture — and hardware, tools, equipment, sporting goods, greasy old mechanical parts, whatever else a man can stash in a garage — to the storage unit, and shove things into whatever cubby holes could still be found. At the same time I had to wield my financial power of attorney and sell my father’s cars to an auction house, to pay for his care and the moving expenses.

Days have turned into years as I’ve cleared the storage unit, which I’ve nicknamed King Tut’s Tomb. An untold amount of the contents have been sold, auctioned, given away, recycled, trashed, or put to new use. I’ve reduced the remainder enough to move to a smaller cheaper 8-by-14 unit. At the same time, though, things from my former home and my mother’s home have been added.

Many decisions I still have to make. The early American dining set could be moved to my mother’s house but I lack the ability to move it myself. The antique sideboard will either find space in my mother’s house or get sold, but that decision can wait. I have three stereos — mine, my father’s, my mother’s — but I like having so many entertainment options throughout the house. One whole drawer’s full of perfectly good drafting supplies, but who does manual drafting anymore? My plan is to eventually close up King Tut’s Tomb, but that day is a long way off.