Jim Kershner: Mom’s moving day a time of tape, tears – and epithets

I want to apologize to my 88-year-old mother, publicly and abjectly, for repeatedly using the word “crap” in her presence last week.

As in:

“Mom, what do you want to do with all of this crap?”

“Are you serious? You really want to keep this crap?”

“Look, your new apartment doesn’t have space for all of this crap.”

“I’ll be right back. I’m taking all of this crap to the Dumpster.”

The problem – familiar to anyone who has helped move an aging parent – is that the aforementioned “crap” is, in fact, her cherished life possessions.

It is, in some ways, her life.

What I’m trying to say is that I might have – in a moment of panic induced by moving-day frenzy – used the word “crap” to refer to some or all of the following items:

• Photos of her grandchildren.

• My late father’s U.S. Navy memorabilia.

• Her own framed wedding portrait.

Now do you see why I need to apologize?

I deserve and expect no mercy, but I have a feeling I will at least receive a modicum of understanding from anyone who has been through the ordeal of helping a parent move. Few tasks are more fraught.

Any moving day is frenzied. But moving a parent is complicated by the supercharged emotions of uprooting an entire life and loading it into boxes.

There were many, many tears. Many, many regrets. Many bitter recriminations.

All of which came entirely from my wife Carol and I. We uttered bad words about the soy sauce we spilled all over the kitchen box. We spewed foul oaths about our own chronic inability to use strapping tape without making a big wrinkled mess of it.

My mom did just fine. She was cheerful and upbeat throughout the entire process. She was easily the most levelheaded of the three of us. She was actually pretty excited to be moving to a new high-rise, with metro Denver and the Front Range spread out in front of her picture windows.

The problems that Carol and I had were not so much emotional as logistical. The climax of the move, or should I say the nadir, came when the moving-van guy announced, after 10 solid hours of work, that there were only three more pieces to bring up.

“Thank goodness!” I said. “So we’re finally done!”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” said the moving-van guy, staring at an apartment piled with boxes. “I meant, we still have the sofa, the dining room table and the china hutch, and there’s nowhere to put them.”

Oh.

I have only a clouded memory of exactly how we managed to clear enough space. It involved stacking boxes in the bathroom, possibly even the shower.

All I know is that we got it accomplished and were able to send the movers home before Letterman came on the air. I also remember clearing the boxes off the bed (and sofa) so that we could collapse that night. I drifted into uneasy sleep, consoled by the thought that, if worse came to worst, we could always rent a U-Store-It garage and haul the overflow there.

Yet the next day, the truth of another well-known moving syndrome was revealed. That is: Just when you are convinced that the best you can hope for is a narrow path through the boxes, you suddenly discover that almost everything is put away and the place looks, miraculously, like home.

Not that everything is completely ship-shape. For the next few weeks, and maybe months, my mom will be methodically putting her new place together. She still has several more boxes to deal with, piled with who knows what kind of crap.

I mean, piled with precious family photos.