Cold coffee tastes better than hot coffee. Even in the dead of winter, I order iced Americanos. At home I brew my coffee in a pour-over and stick it in the refrigerator before I go to bed.
It was because of this idiosyncrasy that last night I noticed the layer of dust that had accumulated on the backsplash portion of my kitchen countertop. Standing at the counter, waiting for the teakettle to whistle, I saw it and said, “Ugh.”
I wet a paper towel and began to clean, starting at one end of my long, narrow, absurdly intimate galley kitchen and working my way back to the coffee-making station. “This is the kind of thing you don’t clean until you move out,” I thought.
Or after you die, then someone else has to clean it.
Immediately I remembered going to my dad’s apartment the day after his death. He had gone into the hospital with COVID symptoms and died ten days later, alone except for the blessed nurses and doctors who tried to save his life.
My siblings were already gathered at our dad’s when I arrived, busy with the tasks of sorting through the remnants of his life and cleaning so we could get his security deposit back. He lived simply and had almost nothing of value, save for the karaoke setup which he ran off of his laptop. On a regular schedule, he dragged a collection of Bose speakers and microphones into nursing homes, community centers, and friends’ garages, and he sang while people laughed and clapped and sometimes danced.
All my dad’s furniture was secondhand, someone else’s garbage scooped up from the curb or the dumpster. “Can you believe someone was throwing this away?” my dad would ask, referring to wooden 1960s style bedside table he kept next to the recliner where he watched Netflix shows. “It’s perfectly fine,” he would note, dismissing the duct tape securing the makeshift leg he fashioned from a broomstick.
Nearly everything he owned went back into the dumpster, in part because it seemed worthless to us but also because the thrift stores were not accepting donations in the deadliest month of the pandemic. Stacks of useless papers, plastic Cool Whip and Country Crock containers full of moldy leftovers, a mismatched hodgepodge of cookware and dinnerware—all of it went into the garbage.
We kept some of his books, crucifixes and pictures of Jesus he had transported from our childhood home, and of course the karaoke setup. I took the books about the enneagram and Black Elk as well as his collection of button-up shirts in various colors of plaid and Hawaiian flowers and two identical rock’n’roll shirts. I added the books to my collection and made the shirts into throw pillow covers for my siblings and myself.
I thought about all of this as I cleaned my own kitchen and wondered what, if anything, my loved ones would keep. Probably not my treasured books, the ones left after I donated five full boxes in preparation for my move back to North Dakota in 2014. Not my DVDs, even the most beloved “The Goonies” which I have viewed no less than 50 times. Also not my collection of Sting, k.d. lang, and Maroon V CDs.
They would not keep any of the fabric scraps I have hoarded like a real seamstress does, longing for the day I would turn all of them into something beautiful or useful or (hopefully) both. They would not keep the Christmas and birthday cards I’ve saved with the intention of sending all the senders a card or letter. Nor would they keep the 6,000 buttons and bobby pins and brightly colored vinyl-coated paperclips, the not-quite-empty-yet gift cards, or my collection of baskets that look like birds.
Not the red lace dress I bought just before Valentine’s Day but have never worn. Not the beautifully carved wooden God Box which contains letters I have written with no intention of sending them. Not the stack of cookbooks waiting dutifully at the end of the kitchen counter, filled with hundreds of recipes I have never made.
I fell asleep thinking about all the things I need to get rid of before I die or retire or move out of this little apartment, the things I don’t use or need or even want at this point, the things collecting dust.
I don’t want to have a throw-away life, one filled with forgotten piles and unopened boxes that will have to be cleaned up by my siblings. I want a life that is simple, easily packed into a moveable living space and transported from one adventure to the next, a life filled not with useless possessions but with valued people and priceless experiences.
Ugh. I better get to cleaning.
Being Wendi 