Tell-Tale Couch

Dear you,

Memorial Day.  Solemn and gracious memories we offer to those who serve and served.  I recall my Dad who fought in WW2 and the Korean War and Mom who worked as an Army nurse. Their serious service makes me proud.  I remember them, recalling stories large and small.  On the small side, I remember how they had a hard time parting with old things, especially furniture.  Our beach house had a stained wreckage of a couch in the den that they just lived with.  Here, in the beach world of hard-to-find labor, I suppose it was easier to do that than struggle to hire a handyperson.  Which brings me to my recent "crime" of ridding myself of a final piece of a hideous sectional couch:

A week or so ago, I couldn't take the old couch thing being in my world any longer.  I dragged it downstairs and placed it under the stairway.  Unwilling to take the tacky and easy way out (which is when owners dump their old furnishings and even appliances in our garbage dumpster enclosure),  I told our somewhat sketchy property manager what I had done and asked for his assistance to remove the thing.  As expected, no responsive action.  Days passed and finally another owner in my building had a handyman on site to do some work.  I tossed him a twenty and asked if he could take the blob away to wherever he took disposables.  "Sure!"  Hurrah!  But that was not the end of it.

Think about Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart".  In that story, a man murders an old dude with a creepy eye and stashes his body under the floor of his flat.  Not the end of that disposal either, he is haunted by the sound of a beating heart that drives him mad.  His crime will not let him go.  The old man, in his way, remains.  So it was/is, sort of, with me.  After the handyman's removal of my couch, I discovered it hadn't gone far.  While strolling around the condo complex, I looked over to a construction site next door.  By their dumpster sat the big blobby sectional, muddy and ratting me out.  Who does that?  Well, sketchy property manager probably saw it and thought I did that, dumping junk at a neighbor's construction site.  Now, many days later, it still sits there.  Like the tell-tale heart, it testifies to my failure to get rid of my junk in a responsible way.  Crimes in the name of minimalism.  Dad and Mom would never do that. (Smile.)

Best to all on this Memorial Day.

Be mindful of what you imagine you've disposed of.

Love,

Joyce