I just got back from Austin. Am I exhausted. I had to go to this meeting to set technology policy for the company. It was mostly a bunch of bullshit. You know how these things go. But I got a chance to see some people I needed to do some work with, and it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Saturday and Sunday I spent working on the Lonsdale house with Cathy. Against my better judgment, we’re going to try to sell it by remote control. What the hell, we’re going to have to clean it up after Marsene left, anyway, it’s vacant, and the market has been worse, so why not at least try. Besides, Cathy already has a listing in Forest North, so it’s right up her alley.
However,…There was a LOT of work to do, and not much time to do it in. Much of my time was consumed with power washing, pretty much the entire house, the driveway and sidewalk, the deck and patio. We tacked up some molding along the cruddy siding in the back, and painted all the trim and touched up a good portion of the siding as well. I even had to rebuild the windowsill where their dogs had chewed the old one to pieces. I removed the chandelier from the dining room (finally!) and replaced it with another, simpler fixture, and we did a variety of other things, frantically running around, racing against time. Ugh. It was ridiculous.
But one thing sticks in my memory. It is the sight of Ed and June Card holding one another, and it makes me choke up a little to think of it. A few years ago, they came pretty close to losing Ed to a heart attack. I can still remember June, beside herself one day when Ed was in the hospital, wringing her hands and crying, asking me to show her how to change the oil in her car. “Ed always changed the oil.” she cried, “I don’t even know how. Can you show me where it goes?” I thought the question odd, considering the timing. I had an opportunity to think about it later, and realized it was poignant and symbolic in a way.
Well, “to make a long story short,” as he would say, Ed survived that battle. And all the intervening time, several years of it, has been just bonus time for them, and it has really brought a new appreciation of one for another. I think of Anita and myself perhaps sometime in the future, and empathize.
Now Ed comes up with some bizarre virus, “IBM” he called it, which is disintegrating his muscle tissue. Their time together is limited. Its really tragic, and breaks my heart. I was glad I got to see them.