A sign on a church on Franklin Road, the route I take to the office, says, “You think this is hot? Try hell.” I’d been thinking recently about hell, that hell doesn’t scare me any more. I’ve lived in it for four weeks now.
The sons were here for a few days. They rented a U-Haul. We’d sold a lot of office furniture on Craigs List, but there was a tremendous amount left in the offices of Genisys Systems Group. We packed up workbenches and stools, shelves, desks, kitchen stuff, ladders, inventory, books and software, customer job files and billing files, millions of patch cables and RAM–new and used–and old monitors and computers that I couldn’t dispose of because of sensitive data on the hard drives.
There was a big Tupperware container of computer case fasteners (why did he keep those things?) that I couldn’t even lift. My friend Currie was helping me clean and pack and she pointed it out. I studied it a moment. “I’m going to make a path out of those — a little silver path through my flower garden.” We laughed. Colleen suggested later that we could make garden stepping stones out of them.
There were two Genisys systems in the office — old ones that had recently been taken out of service at customer locations — from when our company built computers, back in the day before Micron, Gateway, and Dell took the market and made it so that small companies like Genisys couldn’t compete price-wise. I’m thinking about making a computer graveyard out of them in the backyard, like the Cadillac graveyard on I-40 outside Amarillo, Texas.
There were some light moments, but as the day wound down and the office became empty, the tears rolled and wouldn’t stop. It was by far the most stressful, the most awful, the worst day of my life. I stood in that dark, empty, silent office and knew it was really all over. He is gone, his work is done. I took the sign down and turned out the light.
I cried all the way home.
The next milestone will be the merger of the business, and when that happens, I will feel relief for our customers, and I will feel grief for myself. My husband was Genisys. Genisys will move forward and grow and be better. He won’t. He is gone, his work is done.
The sons pointed out that my right eye was red, I had burst a blood vessel in it, the stress had made my blood pressure shoot up sky high, I should be careful and calm down a little.
“No,” I said, “I stuck my fingernail in my eyeball by accident yesterday. That’s all it is.”
Kathy Rhodes 
That must be so incredibly hard. I have a husband in business for himself also with a lot of lab and techie equipment. I have never worked with him; so basically would have to count on our son to figure it all out.
The whole thing sounds very sad but it wouldn’t be less so probably if my husband had to sort through my stuff and dispose of the things that I have accumulated. I keep thinking I will clear out more but so far it’s just thinking.
This is the definition of “stamina.” To plow through, because there’s no other choice. You did it, and it’s a huge milestone.
i finally remembered to come in and read your blogging. what i can’t believe is that all your pieces make sense and have complete thoughts. you are making charlie proud. you know you are. you’re stronger than you think and you want to continue to grow older and wrinkled. (well, maybe not the wrinkled part…) stand tall when you take your walks with chaeli. the girls and i will hang out with you anytime. noshville for breakfast can become a good habit. take care, friend. we’re here for you. keep up your wonderful writing and continue to give charlie something to shake his head about. you know he’s watching.
peace to you, susie