Damaged Furniture

In September 2013, we moved from Boise, Idaho to San Antonio, Texas. I was so excited. I’d waited for that day for 3 years. To move from the cold to somewhere sunnier and warmer.

We’d already gone through a couple of transitions with the quick sale of our house and moving into a tiny apartment 3 floors up. So for the first time ever, we decided to hire some movers to help us move our furniture out and load up the trailers.

It wasn’t cheap.

We thought we were being smart. So many times before we’d done it ourselves; relying on family and friends. It was grueling. Stressful. And hard.

Our “smart” move took forever. Loaders on both ends took forever and made us nervous as they tipped, turned, and moved our furniture in and out.

I know furniture is just “material.” You can’t take it with you when you die. But we take very good care of our things. And we don’t replace it often.  So, let me tell you when my furniture arrived in Texas – how distressed we were to see the damage done to it.

Things were dented. Rub marks from no blankets being used. Scrapes. Things broken completely.

Just about every piece of furniture we owned was now marked up in some way, shape, or form.

I can’t tell you what it did to see the big tear in the top of my hanging porch swing. Something I’d always wanted. Something my husband and I bought together as an anniversary gift.

Or the legs missing from my sofa. The one I’d spent almost a year saving up myself to buy.

The nicks and scrapes out of the precious wood rocking horse we’d splurged and bought over on the coast.

There were broken shelves. Dents and scrapes on my nice black fridge.

You name it.

I was upset. My husband was upset. But he felt what was done was done. We’d hired two different moving companies – one in Idaho and one in Texas. Who was to prove who did what damage? They’d blame each other.

I was going to pursue it. I felt most of the damage was done by the ones who loaded our stuff up. But since we didn’t even get our stuff for a week, and then we had to fly off for a wedding out of state – the normal two week reporting time for damage was done.

And we were left with furniture that would never be the same.

We were “out.” At a time when my husband was unemployed and we didn’t know when we’d be able to replace things.

I WAS upset. But the days ticked on and the sadness dissipated a little. We were all together. We were in a new place. Together. Happy.

And things ARE just things after all.  Yes, I still bemoaned the unfairness of it all. I wanted someone to make things right but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I was now left with dented, broken, damaged, rubbed, scraped, nicked, and bruised furniture.

It reminded me of how you can’t ever save anything. It gets used. Sometimes it gets abused. But you need to enjoy it. Yes, take care of it the best you can. But nothing lasts forever.

Not relationships. Not jobs. Not people. And certainly not our things.

When we least expect it, we get dented, scraped, and broken. And it’s unfair.
Someone doesn’t always pay for the damage done to us. They get away with it and we are never the same.

We can choose how to react and what kind of attitude to have from that point on. We can sit in the unfairness of it all, or be sad for awhile and then let the days show us what we have to be happy about. We can look on our blessings – as I did.

Life IS unfair. We DO get damaged. But we are still here. And we can still be of use.

Just like my furniture.