The End of an Era

Not there was any doubt in my mind, but it is official that I’m old.  The Bellevue School District is tearing down Sammamish High School where my husband and I, along with his six brothers, went to high school.  When my brother-in-law Tim, who is a reporter for KIRO radio in Seattle, sent out an email to the family with a link to the City of Bellevue’s office of land use pages telling of the two and a half year process the school district has planned for essentially tearing down the school in stages and replacing it will a three story brand new building I was gobsmacked.

 

My parents and I moved to Lake Hills, a post-war housing development in East Bellevue in 1957 where I started first grade in a not-yet-finished elementary school.  My classroom had 40 of the baby boom generation in neat rows.  Elementary schools weren’t the only ones being built.  During second grade my mother drove me past the building site where Sammamish was under construction.  “That’s where you’ll go to high school someday,” she said happily.  Like many of the greatest generation my mother was optimistic.  She was living the post war dream of living in a new, albeit modest, ranch house in one of the developments that sprang up when WWII vets returned, finished school, started careers and needed someplace to raise their families.  Bellevue, WA, a bedroom community to Seattle, fit the bill.

There was another side to the optimism of post-war America—the threat of nuclear war.  Because my father worked for Boeing Flight Test on the B-52 program he went to Eniwetok for six months in 1956 and again for five months in 1958 as part of the Boeing crew helping to test the atomic bomb.  Americans thought that the United States was invincible and that our superior technology could overcome all obstacles.  The Space Age was around the corner and the sky was the limit, but because of my father’s work the optimism was tinged with the reality that the Cold War was in full swing. 

Overt things such as my father’s plan for what to do in case of a nuclear attack told me that the world wasn’t such a rosy place.  Yes, I understood where to walk to at the lower edge of the elementary school grounds where my mother would pick me up.  She understood that she and my father would keep the tank of our 1952 Ford at least half full.  My father believed that we would have time to get out of range of Boeing, the Bremerton Naval Facility and Ft. Lewis, which he believed were potential targets, and we would be able to drive to my grandparents’ beach house on the coast.

There were things I wasn’t supposed to know about.  One of the networks (and I’ve never been able to track down which one or the name of the program) aired a television program of what to expect in the event of a nuclear attack.  I’d been sent to bed, but was able to see the television through the crack the door was left open and sat on the floor and was horrified by what I saw.  The grown-ups were going to kill us.  I became convinced of it.

So when my mother drove me past the building site for Sammamish High School in 1959 I paid scant attention.  She couldn’t fool me.  She might be my mom, but she was silly if she thought I was ever going to get old enough to go to high school much less grow up.  I don’t know if I’ve ever grown up entirely, but I did attend Sammamish High School from 9^th to 12^th grade, graduating in 1969.  The first year I still didn’t believe I needed to worry about growing up.  By my junior year it occurred to me that I might.  By my senior year it was panic time, but that’s another story.  Now they are tearing SHS down to make way for a fancy three story building.  The upside is I’ve outlasted it!

Do You Know What's in Your Parents' Safety Deposit Box?

Recently, Chicago Public Radio’s “This American Life” aired an act about a woman whose job it is to dispose of the “estates” of Chicago citizens who die alone with no family to even claim the body. What would it be like to spend your days going through the possession of strangers, people who lived and died alone, and dispose of their things? The program examined what we leave behind for others to deal with. If we are lucky we have loved ones to whom we will things.
Recently I had cause to go through my 86 year old mother’s papers. I didn’t find any million dollar life insurance policies or stocks or bonds, but I did find things that in their own way were amazing. Good thing she was still around to ask questions, but even she was baffled by some of it.

We found letters from insurance companies about policies that had been purchased years ago. Most of them she couldn’t remember; didn’t even know what I was talking about when I asked her. Mutual of Oregon? CNA? Academy Life? Safeco? There was only one actual policy and it was for $700, not $200.

I found an ad for an opthamologist who Mother can't remember and the pin number for Mother's ATM card, just in case she forgot the number.

“Mother,” I said as I was going through the huge stack, “do you do your monthly breast exam at the bank?”

She frowned. “No, why?”

“Well,” I said, beginning to titter. “Care to venture a guess about how this got into the safety deposit box.” I held up my finger from which dangled a card similar to the cards with the keyhole one hangs on a motel door requesting privacy or cleaning only this one contained a diagram for doing a self breast exams. Jo and my mother began to laugh, too, and we laughed until tears ran down our faces.

Nearly the last item I came across was an agreement with the University of Oregon for my mother’s body to go to their medical school. “They will give you ashes when they’re done,” my mother said. “All you have to do is get me to Portland.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” I asked.

“Just throw me in the back of a van and drive me.”

“If they want you, they can come get you. I’m not driving you around when you're dead.”

“I don’t think you can drive a body around without some sort of special license,” Jo said.

“Oh, pooh,” said Mother. “Just throw me in a van.”

“I don’t have a van. I’d have to rent one. Do you think Hertz would approve? Besides, wouldn’t it involve taking a body across state lines?” I asked laughing again.

My mother still insists that we can just prop her in the backseat. After I had taken my mother home for the night with her honey-do list of phone calls to make regarding insurance policies and Jo & I were getting ready for bed I said, “You’d do it with me, wouldn’t you?” I said.

“Yes, I would,” she smiled.

“Well, it’s nice to know someone who’d help you move a body,” I said and we laughed.

So, when’s the last time you looked in your parents safety deposit box or talked about what’s going to happen when they pass on? I don’t suggest it for a Thanksgiving celebration, but better to get surprised now than wait until it’s too late for clarification.

I had much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. The one that surprised me is that I’m thankful to have a friend who would help me drive a body 120 miles. Everyone should have at least one friend who would do that.