Fall cleaning is in full swing here, a tedious and time consuming job that takes attention to the smallest details. I don’t know how one person can dirty up 1907 sq. ft., but I have managed to do just that. When I landed here April 23rd, the house was extremely clean, and I was extremely spent. Things were moved in without the attention I should have given them. I’m making up for that now.
The movers worked all day and late into the night of April 26th, delivering the second load from DUNMOVIN just before midnight. T and K had worked all weekend to put the garage together, and with the heavy furniture in place, Winterpast was looking oddly like home. There was one last task to handle. One I was dreading.
DunMovin needed to be cleaned. This would be my time to say Goodbye to a wonderful place full of so many memories. I wasn’t sure how it would be to enter the empty cavern, or what ghosts awaited me, but, it had to be done. And for me, it would be part of my healing. Seventeen days a widow, I arrived with bucket, mop, vacuum and supplies ready to tackle the job.
DUNMOVIN was a mansion. When VST started looking for houses, it was our intention to downsize from 2500 sq. ft. Planning to travel and use our time for other things, our sights were not set on the 3300 sq. ft., 6 bedroom, 5 bathroom, two story beauty we found, or rather, VC presented to us. She was meant to be ours from Hello. Over 6 years, VST and I transformed her, but, then, you already know that part.
Late Monday morning, I arrived for one of my last visits, ready to rock and roll. I didn’t factor in time for crying the ugly cry. Each surface that I cleaned held our dust. Our fingerprints. The walls had cradled our laughter and arguments. The ghosts were howling loudly that day, as I tackled each room. Torturous doesn’t even touch the surface. Draining, emotionally and physically, like ripping flesh from my body, each swipe with a dust rag left me spent.
I started with the room I thought would be the least traumatic. The upstairs guest room. Not surprisingly, it was one of the rooms that needed less attention, but the windows look out upon the “V” on the side of Mt. Davidson. My tearful cleaning spree commenced.
Then the hard part began. The kitchen. Designed, demolished, and installed by the two of us. The floor was of real oak hardwood that was created as we lovingly picked the order in which each board was nailed. The room was huge, being 33 ft. across and quite deep. VST spent weeks installing the floor that made the place a showpiece, one board at a time, while analyzing his own life. The walk-in pantry held winter provisions when the snow was too deep to get off the mountain during snow-mageddon.
33 windows needed to be cleaned. 33 windowsils. Blinds needed dusting. Baseboards were lovingly washed. Doorhandles and doors gave up their grunge. VST’s blue office was dust free when I finished, the paint referred to as “Old Man Blue”, being a shade too bright for my liking. His bathroom glistened.
The guest bathroom/laundry room that VST had remodeled starting on January 1st was scoured. This was one of the last beautiful pieces of handiwork left as a testiment to his perfectionism. Four hours later, I came to the hardest rooms yet. Our bedroom, closet, and master bathroom. I believed by that time, all my tears had been spent. But, no. The room slayed me as I lay on the carpet and wept into the emptiness. This was the room in which we said our final Goodbye. And now, it was taking one more Goodbye from me.
The closet, with it’s chandelier, was first. I had seen a show on HGTV in which two women installed a chandelier in the closet of an old farmhouse. It was adorable, and I announced to VST that I needed a chandelier in my closet. It was quickly installed, and became a talking point when showing the house. How frivolous and fun. How VST. The lady wants a chandelier in the closet, she gets one.
The bathroom was something out of a magazine, featuring a chromotherapy tub. I didn’t know this was a thing. I guess so, but not for me. I only tried this feature once. It involved flashing lights in different colors. I think it could cause epilepsy, myself. The jetted tub was soaking deep, with a drying cycle. I never understood whether the cycle was to dry the bather or the tub itself.
I thought of VST installing the rich, dark wooden cabinets himself, measuring everything so carefully. And then, I thought of the terminally ill VST I helped shower just weeks before, and the crying commenced again.
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Finally the Master bedroom was left, at hour six. This would complete only the upstairs. I was too old for this.
No longer crying, I felt his presence in this beautiful room. Four windows, carefully placed, showed VC as a painting looking out from the side of our mountain. Suspended in air, it was as if we lived on a third plane. Sugarloaf Mountain looked back at me in stunned disbelief that I wouldn’t be greeting her every morning anymore. How many days I had opened the door leading to the deck to hear the church chimes from St. Mary’s on the Mountain, or listen to the forlorn whistle from the steam train. In the spring, the children from the Jr. High giggled, their laughter coming in on the breezes that blew freely in VC. Cheers from the baseball diamond just past the park. The drama of a life flight helicopter landing right within view. Tourists driving turtle-slow to take in the beauty of our houses on A Street. All the memories flooded through my head as I swept lonely cobwebs and vacuumed one last time.
But, the worst of all, was the memory of April 1, when, only one week before he died, VST asked the Hospice worker to place his hospital bed by the window, so that he could see VC any time he opened his eyes. I remember coming into the room, and VST wanted to sit up. There were metal curtain stays on either side of the window to hold back the drapes during the day. He grabbed one to pull himself up.
“Hey, don’t pull on that. It might break,” I scolded him.
“Don’t worry. It won’t. I installed it myself.” He grinned at me. Of course, he was right. Nothing VST every built or installed would ever break. Period.
The last bit of cleaning done, I went to close each blind. I closed doors, telling each room “Thank You” and “Farewell”. At hour 8, way past my dinner time, I headed home, an hour’s drive East. The last few tears were leaking when the phone rang. Dead tired, I answered.
“Joy, is the house done?” It was my beloved realtor. Bless his heart. I think I said something that wasn’t very lady-like or nice. I had to hang up with his next remark, because there were no words.
“Couldn’t you hire a maid?”