These thoughts are partial, not full.

It’s a bit strange to put into words my experiences from today. This morning I entered my father’s apartment to begin cleaning things out and piecing together the bits of his life. Upon entered my father’s apartment I was hit with the smell of decaying trash, and the leftover aroma of death that still lingered. There was trash everywhere. Some 30 or more bottle of prescription medicines were strewn about—mostly half-used bottles of methadone, cigarette butts freely littered the floor. Old and unopened mail piled on tables, on the bed, going back to the late 90s.

It took a few hours to clean up the apartment (I’m still not done), and go through mounds of papers to see what was necessary for saving and what needed to be chucked. Everywhere that smell seemed to swarm around me so much that I wondered if it would become part of me by the end of the day.

As I went through trash, drawers, closets, files, and more I was assessing my father’s life. What I was left with was a truly sad picture. The accomplishments and relationships of my father didn’t even fill the small briefcase I used.

As I was cleaning things up one of the neighbors came to the door to give condolences then another, and another. “Did you know my father very well,” I asked?

“Oh no,” said the elderly black man who lived next door. “Your father really didn’t talk to people much.”

I was surprised to learn that the thing that triggered the neighbors to check on my father was not the smell coming from the apartment, rather it was his car.

“I noticed your father’s car was getting dusty then I knew something was wrong,” the nice woman from next door said. “Your father really liked that car, he never let it get dirty. When I saw it was getting dusty I figured he must have been really sick.”

In fact he’d been dead for a number of days, possibly 12. His mail was unchecked since the 14th. His phone messages unheard since that same date.

My father’s life seems to be summed up as a man who knew a lot of people, but didn’t have a lot of real relationships. He was a nice guy, people seemed to like him, but that wasn’t hard when all he presented to most people was a “Hi, how are you?” every now and then.

In my father’s old briefcase I have a few pictures he kept of himself, financial records, tapes of his acting auditions, and his publicity photographs for his work as a TV extra. Everything in his apartment today screamed at me: It’s all about me. It’s all about me. It was the empty envelopes that screamed the loudest.

Amidst the invoices, notices, and various other kinds of mail were opened, empty envelopes. I threw out more than 15 bags of trash, a good portion of that was open empty envelopes. “Tom Olhausen” was written on the front, but inside there was nothing. How appropriate I thought. How tragic.

I’m left with this haunting conclusion that at the end of my father’s life there was nothing to treasure. No warm memories, no deeds to be admired, no character to be imitated. Just a lot of empty envelopes representing a life spent in meaninglessness.