Let There Be a Job to Do:Dad comes right to the doing ceremony. Faster than a speeding bullet. He leaps tall buildings in a single bound with method in the madness.
Kent executes the thing exactly in his own good time.
Sarah can get going with dad's same speed and logic and must have Kent's meticulous mind. Who can know what a combination that is! I don't! I complimented her while we walked and talked the other morning for figuring out how (over six long weeks) to keep the work project at mom and dad's going. She never asked to be leader. She lives away, like more than half of us. Like all of us she's eager to help; she listened to what dad and mom wanted and her energy and ideas are surfacing. She's here for now. She has time with few interruptions. And she's receiving promptings. Angelic help, we're beginning to know.
Dad wanted first an inventory: Kent took that of the furnishings in writing, meticulously, within days and dad could begin to divy up the furniture - then Sarah suggested we take individual pictures of all else. A photo inventory. She's doing it.
They thought of having the pictures burned to CDs which could be mailed to the brothers and sisters so each and their families can see what mom and dad want us to have. Dad burned the CDs - then Sarah suggested the pics be uploaded online too. Huge access and super efficient.
Brothers and sisters e-mailed me their choices from the photo inventory. It's working! It's exhilarating. And I'm swimming in e-mails and printouts, and checks and balances will have to happen. Laughing with Sarah and almost apologetically, I say: Look how not logical I am! I come into a project not first knowing what will work best. I DO get the result, but only after experiencing how not to do it. I told her how now I know what to do for the second rounds of photos: Ask each brother and sister to send one e-mail to me only, with everything their whole family wants; duplicates eliminated, titles or camera numbers intact and a written description of the thing to the side. Ta-da! And Kent and I are whittling out how to work this together since he's entering the information in Excel and sorting and printing paperwork for dad to look at ultimately - getting my part right is PDI,pretty darn
Sarah smiled when I told her.
She's told me how in fact she's keeping the end result in her mind of
a) getting their things all out of the house, while
b) preserving items precious to the family.
Pearls from oysters, this - as it will have included diving deep into closets, drawers and shelves . . . under stairs and in bedrooms and utility rooms and handling hundreds of items and taking pictures, and finally digitally scanning our parents' scrapbooks and journals and documents onto the computer.
She added by the way, and of
c) maintaining family relationships.
These are her prime directives. She feels keenly (I've said it before) after our brothers and sisters who are away. Not months ago it was me... I love our sibs' attitudes of 'opting in' to the project wherever they are however they can, and thank goodness and thanks to our Heavenly Father we're all in it together! She feels grateful for the extra-normal guidance she knows she's getting for thinking things through and communicating while we work. There has been so much to it...
Sarah keenly understood along with the other five of us brothers and sisters when mom and dad said let There Be a Job to Do that it could have gone several ways.
Dad tells the story of him helping clear land for an LDS chapel to be built. A squatter had thrown up a ramshackle house on the property and was refusing to leave. Dad waded in; called for excavating equipment to be on site Monday morning and asked for members of the church to come the Saturday before to work. They came and Dad said to them, "Put anything that will burn against this building." Brush and debris were soon stacked against the squatter's little home. Out he came, blustering and in shock, demanding to know what was going on. Dad minced no words: "Get what you want from your house and go if you don't want to go up in smoke."
Far from the image of simply 'letting their stuff go up in smoke' - us rolling our parents' belongings out auction-style or in cardboard to the thrift store - Sarah holds the idea in her mind of our parents' exit from their home as dignified and filled with grace, as bespeaks their lives.
My admiration flows towards each one of us who hold this image and with our separate and unique talents are engaged in the process. Kudos to you who are giving of yourselves first knowing what you give, and how to do it - it is a gift. Kudos to us who labor beside you learning as we go. My heart is full - full - even as we empty the home and ourselves in service.
