I decided to sleep at David’s apartment on Monday night. A lot of people might think this is weird, but when I am in a certain funk, there is some comfort I have being in a place that I am very familiar with. I chose to do this this week for a couple reasons: I wanted to show a friend a couple pieces of furniture that might have use in another apartment, and I knew this week was the last week that David’s apartment would be “David’s Apartment.”
On Friday, the housing authority will come, and they will pick up the rest of David’s personal effects. Things he cherished and worked extremely hard for are going to find their way into the back of a truck. I didn’t have the room for them in my places, nor the time to figure out an alternative option. People expressed interest, but there was no logistical way or means for those items to find a familiar home.
The TV is off the wall, the artwork is down. Letters and little odds-and-ends have been packed as best they can into little boxes. The walls show only holes that need patching with little silhouettes of clean spots indicating what was once showcased. A lonely little spotlight shines on an empty wall that, until a few weeks ago, held the frame I made for David with three of my favorite pictures of me and him.
It is sad. I remember the excitement of his hunt for his first and only home, and how hard he tried to get a place in the city. I regret not having helped him paint it when he first moved in because I was too caught up in myself to take the trip up to NYC and help him settle into one of the most exciting moments of his adult life. I guess I will end up getting to paint for him, but this time, it’s only so that somebody else can make the apartment his or her own.
As I sat staring at the walls and listening to the noises coming off Lexington, I thought of all the work that had gone into making it David’s and all the work that was going into it to make it back to an apartment.
If those walls could speak, what would they tell me? What could they possibly share with me about those last days when I wasn’t there? Those last minutes when David switched gears from hopeful to hopeless? What would they tell me about the joyful moments, the good times shared, and the sadness they saw and held within their four-plus walls?
For me, this is a very hard moment. This Friday is like putting the final packaging tape on a box that will be sent away to never return. I think about David’s couch and the time we spent on it… talking about everything… when it was there for me when I needed someplace else to sleep when I was having a rough night. 3G was, to me, a little cave that I could escape to, and within was a little guy whom I could always depend upon to provide some sort of comfort no matter the time of day. He may not have been happy, but the door was always open, and there was a nook for me to crash out on or just hide out for a bit.
In the last few months, I have filled countless bags with things that held so much sentimental value, yet had no place in my new life or alternative use. They found their way into 40-gallon contractor bags to be carried out like construction debris to a Goodwill or Salvation Army or sometimes to the incinerator.
I slept there that night and thought somewhat dismally to myself, “This is a chapter closed on my brother’s life.” The reality of it all comes to a headway on Friday. I will disassemble a bed I assembled at his first apartment in West Haven so many years ago. It’ll get bagged, and it will find it’s way to the trash because the donation companies can’t take it.
I sat in that apartment and just kind of looked around—looked at the bar, the little coffee table, the little bench at the foot of his bed. What a waste. I lounged out on the bed and grabbed a throw blanket from behind the couch over me. I recall the softness of everything David bought. Always soft, unbelievably so, from his jeans to his t-shirts, sheets, and throws. He had the knack for finding the softest things and blending them into his domain.
After the movers come on Friday and take away the last of his stuff, I will apply a final coat of paint to the walls. I’ll sweep up the little tidbits, Windex off some counter tops. I’ll flick the lights off and lock the door. And from that moment on, the apartment will cease to be all it had been for all those years.
Chapter 1 – The End…
