What the Market Will Bear

Have you heard that major decisions are to be postponed for at least a year following a death or crisis. Bone marrow transplant and cancer is crisis and plenty too close to death. We should have known better than accept an offer on the sale of our Dewey Lake, Michigan house. We have been on Washington Island five years and hadn't seemed to miss the belongings still stored there but going back this past week to clean out the house was an emotional and physical hit that Joe and I have not recovered from. We took all the kids and valiantly started sorting belongings. School papers from kindergarten, a collection of my early sermons, outgrown duplo blocks, pieces and parts for every project not yet finished. Dry wall for a ceiling in the basement, a shower stall for the bathroom upstairs. Memories. And loss. The work of Joe's hands is all over the one acre lot. The green house that he wants on Washington Island is in place at Dewey. The steps he built from the road to the lake, the children's play house. For all the good reasons we left, and all the good reasons we had to sign the purchase offer, we came up fragile in our attempt to go back and say goodbye. A forty-yard dumpster delivered in the drive began to fill with our efforts to close. Yards more of what we can't bear to part with and have no room for on Washington Island remain for the next trip needing to be made before mid-November. That which is "can't bear to part with" takes on new meaning through the lens of cancer but to jettison is tough. The net sheet from the real estate agent presents us with a receipt for what looks to us as near give away.