The Agony of the Inventory
Getting down to the wire on the submissions for the lost contents in the house after the fire.
What frustration, 69+ years of life and 40 years of living in this house, all pretty much gone. How do you remember everything that was housed within those walls? All the things that you used, but maybe only occasionally, but you bought them once because you needed them, until you need them again they are faded from the memory.
When the firemen left all was black and chaos, your memories are gone in the fright of the fire, the loss is inconceivable, defying rational thought. The first thoughts are to survive and how that is going to happen. Then you live within a blank space of your mind, thankful you have someplace to camp until the rebuilding is done. All energy is used to make that happen, little thought for possessions.
Time wraps itself around “getting back into the house”. Little spaces of time are used to try out “acting normal, as if all is well”. The thought of inventory recedes into the background in a haze of denial. All focus is on what needs to be purchased to get the house back and what will the insurance pay for and what will they not. They become the tight fisted enemy that must be begged and pleaded with.
Slowly, it becomes apparent that you have to review your life in possessions, you have to look through all the closed up files and the memories that go along with the opening of those files and write down the names of things. List after list, thing after thing, so many it overwhelms you, building resistance within you for the onerous task. Things that can never be replaced, but would have been nice to leave in your passing, as memories for the generations to come. Things that you find out will maybe have no value from the insurance or only be paid for in pennies for their worth.
Anger slowly builds for the lack of respect for your possessions, the lack of value for that which was once so special to you. A depression descends into every cell and you ask yourself, “why make the lists when the things are worth nothing?” Why descend into all those memories, if they were good then now they are vanished, if they were bad then they weigh on your soul.
As in all of life, you have the good with the bad. How would you be able to grasp the thrill of the heights of the good, if you had never experienced the black depths of the bad? In the end I shall continue forward with the lists and be grateful beyond belief when the deadline has arrived and the whole issue is taken out of my hands, and whatever is done is done!