Today we put the remaining miscellaneous of your deceased grandparents' things in a dumpster with a capacity of four tons.
I don't know how you felt because we worked hard at it for 90 minutes and then went back inside to shower and eat without talking about it. But I saw you kept the wooden sign with her initials.
At first I could tell it was junk we were moving. There was a pile high with inflatable inner tubes and rags, half-full cans full of paint, and the like. It wasn't until after all of that when we got to your grandfather's work benches and your grandmother's books that I was struck by the task at hand. The partial cans of motor oil and the old Maxwell coffee containers labeled nuts, bolts, and nails, the pegboard intended for use later on, and the old work shirt I found strewn in the corner - they all told me a story. The pieces of his life in this barn told me how much time he spent out there tinkering, thinking. I stood and held a pile for the dumpster and looked around. I imagined this man I never met, toying with odds and ends and electronics. I wondered at his thoughts in those hours of solitary time.
And there were your grandmother's books. Surely, these were once kept carefully in the house, safe from the weather and musk and rodents. But someone could not bear to throw them out and they were brought in here for safekeeping as they worked the courage to rid her things. The books; many titles of nonfiction and National Geographic. There were children's books, which I imagine she might have read to you. There were so many Reader's Digest compilations. And I saw a glimpse into the interests of a women I have only heard about. I wondered if she read all of the titles. I did not recognize them.
Like clockwork, you and I trucked back and forth from garage to dumpster with our arms full of others' lives. We passed one another midway and might have glanced or not. The barn slowly began to look empty, to show its walls and floor, and stairs to the second floor.
We reached the maximum level on the dumpster. "Small and heavy things," you told me. "Small and heavy things." And we found more oil cans. We found old batteries. We took a house fan from the 1950s and tossed it over the edge.
"Small and heavy things," you said.
In the end it was the books. I hate to say that, it hurts to admit it. But in the end we took the books, too.
