So Wasted...

Well it has been a while since I have posted.  Sorry. 

We, meaning of course, my husband, my daughter, my son-in-law and my brother – not me - spent four weekends moving the last things out of Brian and Kara’s house.  Kara’s sister retrieved Kara’s things for her family months ago and then the kids took all of the furniture and anything else that they wanted.  So what was left was really only stray stuff – books, exercise equipment, camping gear and the kind of stuff that you have no idea what to do with.  But I did not want to chance anything personal being missed like pictures or letters or anything so it has all been brought back to my home for me to go through and then dispose of.

Then right in the middle of that our lease was up and we had to move out of the rental house.  So we have been in moving hell for more than a month and are living in a disaster area and you seriously could not kick your way through any room in my house for two solid weeks. 

Tuesday was the foreclosure sale of their home - a difficult day to say the least.  That has brought on a lot of renewed anger.  I guess just the pitiful waste of it all.  Wasted efforts of us trying to help them and of course the haunting question – did their being in that house in any way contribute to this? Had we not done that – would we be where we are now?  I realize that in the logical, reasonable world that does not really make any sense – but it haunts me with guilt and fear just the same. 

Then there is the wasted time and effort and the long days and nights that they spent working on the house and what a beautiful job they did and how much love they put into it.  Someone else now will reap the benefits of all that love and hard work without ever knowing how much the home had meant to the family we lost in there.

Then there is the waste of all of their dreams including the dream of Kara having her first child and that house was the only home he ever knew.  He chased Minnie up and down the halls while she barked and he laughed and squealed; he pushed his little “learn to walk” toy that his aunt Michelle had given him up and down the hall a million miles.  That home is where he “Skyped” with his Mema and Pap-Pap that lived out of state, several times a week.  That was where he played in the bathtub --with cars and not boats and that was where I videoed him playing in the tub the last time I babysat with him and laughed while he tried to teach a Lamborghini to swim.  That is where he stood on the sofa and looked out the window every afternoon waiting for his daddy to come home and where I always looked for his little face in that same window as he waved goodbye to me whenever I left.   He jumped on his trampoline in his back yard there and slid on his slide and played with his little special friend next door on the swing set his Mema and Pap-Pap bought for him.  And that was where with tiny hammer in hand, he helped his daddy build the “enormous” woodshed out back.  And where he and his Mama picked the vegetables they had planted together every afternoon from the raised bed garden boxes his daddy built for them.  That is where he used to, in a fit of giggles, shut me in the tiny linen closet I would barely fit in - for a quick game of hide and seek and also where he and I raced  tiny cars around the coffee table hundreds of times.  It was there that I took the last video I have of him singing “Haddy Dirtday” to me just weeks before --he also died in that house.

That was where Kara hosted her first and last Thanksgiving dinner and where she snuggled the newborn baby that she never thought she would have.  That is where she worked and painted and worried over making his nursery just perfect and where she then graduated him from the muted pastels of a “baby nursery” to the toddler “Veggie Tales” theme of bright primary colors and her hand-made people-sized cucumber wall-hanging and then later to the Disney movie “Cars” theme as he developed an obsession to anything with wheels on it.  That is where she hosted a graduation party for my daughter’s son when he graduated high school and where she had her first cookout on the deck and we all gathered for fireworks for the fourth of July.  There was where, with all the patience in the world, she helped Brian’s daughter do her freshly painted conservative neutral beige room in leopard prints and hot pink splatter paint.  And that was where we surprised her with the designer purse that she’d had her eye on for months for the very last birthday she would ever celebrate exactly one year to the day before the day that rocked our world.

Even after all the hard work and talent that Brian put in there, the thing he was most proud of about that house was the fact that it would be paid for in seven years.  He never took that for granted and he was always so grateful to us for helping them out like that.  He could hardly believe that he would be able to provide that kind of security for his family and he thanked us for it repeatedly.

He worked tirelessly on that house from the time he moved in until the week before they died.  In the three months prior he had just put in a new front door, built the woodshed in the back and had the new vanity and tile to begin the remodel on the bathroom – the last of the upstairs to be redone. 

It was the first time he had felt at home since he sold the first home he bought with his first wife 18 years earlier.  And that was where he finally felt like his life was coming back together.  He had started his own business there and much to my dismay had not decided to pursue something that allowed him to use his God-given gifts in wood-working.  He has built some of the most beautiful furniture - bookcases, shelves, chess tables, bathroom vanities, gun cases and even a reproduction of a Victorian “lady’s writing desk” for me.  And of course, he was also so talented at home improvement and carpentry as well and I keep thinking back to when he and I had talked about a joint partnership buying and redoing foreclosed homes since he had outdone himself on the remodel of this house.  Little did I know that the first foreclosure sale I would attend would be the sale of this home under “these” horrific circumstances.  So yeah, there was a lot of emotion surrounding the house sale and a lot of anger at the magnitude of the waste.

But on the other hand, it has caused me so much anguish worrying over what to do about it until now that it is done – I just can’t think about it anymore.  

The Project

 Brian always loved a project and he had always wanted to build his own home.  We were going to give him an acre of land so that he could do that and he wanted a builder to come in and get it dried in for him and then let him take it over and finish it a little a time as he could pay for it so that when he got it built it would be paid for.  We found him a suitable acre on the other side of our property and called a builder he quoted him $30,000 to get the foundation laid and get it dried in.  At the time, there were hundreds upon hundreds of foreclosures in the area and many were in very bad shape.  Some could be bought for just a little more than it would have cost to get a small house dried in by a builder.  Donald and I decided if he was in any way interested in something like that – we would get a home equity loan on our house and purchase one and let him do the renovations.  I told him “By the time you get through with some of these houses you will feel like you built it from the ground up!”  We set out to find one that was in poor shape “cosmetically” but in a good location and had a good workable floor plan and no big money issues.  We found exactly that and closed on the house right after Paxton was born.  

The house was a wreck!  But I saw potential.  I just hoped and prayed they could.  

I knew what Brian was capable of but Kara did not and I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t just walk in and either burst into tears or walk right back out.  But she surprised me as she always seemed to do as she just walked into that ridiculous mess and started making plans for how they would “paint this a pretty color gray and put an island right here in the kitchen and we can make that little room downstairs into an office”.

Brian and Kara were so excited until they could hardly wait to get started on it although the baby was newborn and Kara was fresh out of the hospital she wasted no time in diving in paint brush in hand. 

Oh my goodness that house was a disaster.  It had sat empty for quite some time and had been vandalized multiple times apparently. There were no less than 150 holes in the walls and doors.  There was no flooring at all just plywood sub floor.  Half of the kitchen cabinets were missing, all of the appliances stolen, pieces of baseboard ripped off with a crowbar leaving huge holes in the wall where there should have been baseboard.  The living room had cathedral ceilings one main wall painted 20 feet high in red enamel!  The master bedroom had a beautiful tray ceiling and bay window and the entire thing was painted in the Georgia Bulldog colors of red and black – even  the ceiling. 

      

The master bath had all of the fixtures ripped out of the garden tub and holes the size of saucers in the wall over the toilet where a cabinet had literally been ripped off the wall.  Not one single room was even remotely livable.  Every door in the entire house needed replacing.  But the house had good bones and no real money damage.  The roof was good.  Miraculously, the heat and air system was intact and operable and the copper not ripped out of the electrical box.  There were no termites.  No plumbing problems.  No foundation problems and it sat on a full acre of very pretty land that backed up to a large tract of woods. 

Brian and Kara worked night and day priming, painting, laying wood floor, installing custom tile in the kitchen, all new oak cabinets, new counter tops, new fixtures and appliances, and all new interior doors.  He refinished the steps going down to the basement and they were stunning.  He even built a custom-made baby gate to match the stair rail and spindles.

Brian's baby gate

He installed cabinets in the laundry room and built Kara her island for the kitchen.  She was right there beside him working like a master contractor. 

Brian took $8,000 and the two of them together turned it into a dollhouse.  They enjoyed every minute of it and they worked together like a precision team.

They were so excited to see that house go from a non-livable dump to a beautiful home and they were so proud of their own accomplishments.  It was not only building them a home to raise Paxton in – but building blocks for their marriage too.  A symbol of what they could accomplish when they worked together as a team.  And the best part was that it would be completely paid for in seven years. 

After they got moved in they continued with the decorating and renovations to the house and yard.  They cleaned up the yard; cut down trees; made flower beds. At Kara's request I dug up Hosta and rooted her three or four Hydrangea from my yard and she carefully planned where to put them in her new flower bed.  They cleared out a spot for a fire pit for summer evening family time.  They had even recently decided to try their hand at gardening and Brian built garden boxes so Kara could plant herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and even a crop of “corn” in an 8X8 box! 

The one main hold out on the renovation was the three piece front door set.  He had never tackled anything like that as it had a palladium window above it and he wasn’t sure what would hold that up if he removed the door.  So that was last on the list.  He had caught the door Kara had chosen on sale and bought it and let it sit in the garage for a year until he could figure out where to begin.  About three weeks before they died he found what it took to take the old door, side lights and frame out and replace it with the new one; meticulously painted in the color Kara chose.  That completed the main living space of the house and he was moving on to the downstairs man cave.

Over the summer he had been cutting, splitting and stacking firewood to be prepared for the winter.  The house with the high ceilings was difficult to heat and they kept a fire burning most of the time so all summer long as he came up on downed trees anywhere he asked if he could clean it up and he brought it home in anticipation of a cold winter.  About May he began construction on a huge woodshed.  It was as tall as a one story house and three sided and vented to keep the wood dry and rot free.  Many days as he was out working on the woodshed, Paxton was right there pretending to hammer right along side his daddy.  He had just finished filling up it with about four truckloads of split firewood.   

I have learned recently exactly what hopelessness means.  When I wake up and have no desires to even see tomorrow;  no hope for the future; no dreams and no plans. 


Totally unlike Brian.  He looked forward to the future.  He had wishes, dreams, desires & plans. 

He did not know hopelessness and dying was not in his plan.