CLEANING UP AFTER A DEATH

“He raiseth up the poor out of the dust,
and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill;” (Psalm 113:7)

“He raises the poor out of the dust,
And lifts the needy out of the ash heap,” (Psalm 113:7 New King James Version)

When I say, “Cleaning Up After a Death”, I DON’T mean cleaning up blood at a crime scene or at a “death from natural causes” scene for that matter. I’m not talking about cleaning a dead body, although I know people have to do that. I mean going through people’s effects after they die and trying to sort things out and make “heads or tails” of all sorts of “stuff”. Each of my parents died in 2000 and each of them were pack rats. They threw almost nothing out. My sister and I spent over 7 years on Saturdays going through their things.

It was hard. I’d go over to Canton. I’d spend about 2-4 hours on the project. That was the most I could do in a day. I’d usually leave with a couple of bags full of trash and a cardboard box of things I wanted to keep. Imagine doing that most Saturdays between the spring of 2001 and the fall of 2008. We did. It could get quite emotional. There were SOME things we just could not bring ourselves to throw out. So my sister got three big plastic Rubbermaid containers...one for my late brother Eddie, one for my Dad and one for my Mom. The things we just COULDN’T bring ourselves to throw out or give away and are in those containers in my sister’s attic.

My wife has been asking me to “pack up” my office. A friend of mine who pastored a church in suburban St. Louis, Missouri which struggled and ultimately closed has said it’s like the death of a child. He says I will go through a difficult grieving process. He’s right. I just haven’t wanted to pack up my office although I know it has to be done. One reason I haven’t wanted to pack up my office is that there is nowhere to put the stuff! Some of my immediate family are pack rats. Our residence is FULL of stuff. We frankly need to get rid of at least 25% of the things at our home and there’s no room to add anything else. Another reason is that it reminds me of the death of this church- First Assembly of God of Framingham. As much as colleagues tell me I’m not a failure, walking into that place sure makes you feel that way. I used to get annoyed that the phone would “ring off the hook” with all sorts of calls. Now, the phone is disconnected so it never rings. I used to like to pop onto the internet as a diversion at the office. Now the high speed internet is turned off. There is NO internet to access.

Today, I decided to start working on the office. No I have not started packing up yet. I decided to go through my office shelves, and my files and desk drawers and throw out anything I really don’t want to save. It reminded me SO much of what I used to do with going through my parents’ effects. I forgot that I had some photos of my late brother and my father in one of my desk drawers. There were also candid photos of many church people mostly dating from the late 1990s. There were photos of my kids from the mid 1990s. There were photos of my “walkathon” from 1996. Some people will want to kill me but I got so choked up by seeing the walkathon photos that I threw them out. That was also true of some of the church people photos. I DID save photos of my brother and father. Our church dumpster is just about full and it’s being removed on Wednesday. I think removing it is insane but that wasn’t my call. I did fill several bags of trash just from my office. I took one bag home and will put it out with my family trash this week. I jammed the others into the dumpster.

I know that if my family goes into my office they’ll say, “You haven’t done ANYTHING in here!” It LOOKS like that, but I’ve gone through a lot of stuff and thrown out a lot of stuff. I know I could have and should have thrown out even more. I’m sure there’ll be a 2nd and 3rd time going through the office and more and more things sorted out and thrown out. THEN I will be ready to start packing my books, photos, plaques and other things into boxes.

Mary Ann is saying we may need to rent a storage site for now to put things like that in. I have a file cabinet in my office which I “go into” constantly. It’s very important to me, but there’s no room for it at my residence.

I just never figured on the church closing. I thought some day I’d get a different pastorate or ministry position and just be moving all these things to a new office. As it is, my library is only about HALF the size of a typical 55-year-old Assemblies of God minister’s library. And, my paraphernalia is less that half of what you’d find for most clergy. My office is VERY small....one of the smallest pastor’s offices you’d ever see. Even so, this is going to be a big job and an emotional job.

It’s tough cleaning up after a death.