Treasures

The big shiny black/brown cockroach was in the same place as it was the day before in Olive's basement. I wasn't sure if it was dead, alive, or plastic. I was in her basement in the house where she had lived for almost 60 years with her husband Les. I had been down there many times over the years and never saw cockroaches. I am not a fan of them but I was hoping it was alive. I wanted something to be alive in Olive's soon to be empty house. The auction company was coming soon to get rid of all of house's contents, once Olive and Les' treasured, collected over their 70+ years of marriage.

"It’s dead", I thought.    I waited for it to move but it didn’t, not even when I turned the light on.  Wasn’t it supposed to scurry off when a light was turned on?  I couldn’t bring myself to poke it or squish it.  So I let it be.  It wasn’t going to bother anyone.  The house would soon be empty and it would find a new home.

If my friend Olive wasn’t already dead,  she would have died if she saw that cockroach. She was pretty much opposed to any sort of living or dead bug in her house or elsewhere.  She was a "girly girl". She wasn’t much into nature. Her plants always died because she didn’t water them.    

Olive hadn’t been in her basement for several years as she was unable to navigate the narrow staircase. The cockroach had free reign.  I thought it was probably real because I had found a dead mouse on the floor in another one of the cluttered rooms a few days earlier. Before that though, despite the clutter and dust, I hadn't seen any bugs or mice. Just dust and the smell of emptiness and a hint of Elizabeth Taylor "Diamonds" perfume - Olive's favorite.

I carefully walked around a bumper pool table in the middle of the room. It was piled high with books, antimacassars, old toaster ovens and blenders and bags of assorted clothes probably not worn in years.  Olive had been 103 when she died and I don’t think she ever gave away any of her clothes.   Like many of us, her sizes went up and down over the years and the bags were marked "too big" or "too small". Underneath the table were several boxes of fine china dishes that Les, her husband had given her for various holidays.  I thought how no one seem to want fancy dishes anymore unless they are dishwasher safe. Several shoe boxes along the wall contained old pictures from their travels, and seemingly every greeting card they had ever received.   A big old console TV was against one wall,  old placemats and road maps stacked on top. 

All of the forgotten treasures in that  basement told a story about Les and Olive’s  lives together and separate.  They had been together since she was 18 so they spent more time together than apart. Les had fought in WWII.  His army uniform, looking ready to be worn at any time, hung on a rope strung  between two beams in the furnace room, along with Pendleton wool shirts, some with tags still on and old jackets.  A metal file cabinet was filled with nursing textbooks from the 1940s when Olive attended nursing school.  Her student nurse uniforms hung, still starched, next to Les’ army uniforms along with an old mink coat and several other jackets, most with shoulder pads pinned into them. An adjacent room had as the main attraction, a bar that Les had built out of what looked like old beer barrels. Despite being in the Army and surviving Normandy Beach in WWII, he didn't drink but loved to have parties. I could imagine him behind that bar, telling jokes and pouring drinks. Unopened but probably sour bottles of wine and bottles of beer whose born on date expired decades ago were on shelves behind the bar. A lighted beer sign advertising Becker beer on the wall behind the bar later ended up selling for a fair amount at an online auction.

Olive and Les  had no children.  She said I was like the daughter she never had, but didn’t have to go through the trouble of raising..  Her closest relative was  a nephew who lived back east.  He told me to take anything I wanted from her house.  She had so many things from over 103 years of living and traveling and loving Les..  She had long since forgotten about  them or what they meant to her.  It made me sad to think about it,  how, in the end, our possessions mean very little and are thrown away or sold to people who will never know their back story.

I made my way to a corner desk where Les had kept a rock collection.  I had promised to get some for my grandson who collected rocks and stones.  Various sized rocks were sitting on the desk along with old alarm clocks and music boxes  which I assumed were meant to be repaired.  Les liked to fix things and often went to antique stores or auctions, which accounted for a lot of things in that basement. 

I looked warily at that motionless slimy roach.  Had he moved a little?  I didn’t think so but part of me imagined him (her?  they?) rushing over to me and crawling up my pant leg and hissing “I’m alive!”.  Didn't cockroaches hiss?  I thought I heard that somewhere. 

I hurriedly grabbed some pretty rocks and went back around the pool table.  The cockroach hadn’t moved. I sighed and realized this would be my last time in this basement.  I walked directly over to the cockroach and knelt down.  It was plastic.  I felt sad.  I wanted it to be alive or maybe I wanted Olive to be alive. I laughed at myself and said "goodbye" to the basement, to the plastic cockroach and to my friend Olive. As I went up the steps I thought how her life and our friendship had been the real treasure.