My parents have, after painstakingly sorting through the furniture, clothing, documents and records, hiring a cleaning crew and replacing doors and locks, at last put my grandmother’s house in North Carolina—a year and a half after her passing—on the market. There is, even in this terrible economy, some interest in the property.  (It is at its reduced price a steal for someone, what with the land attached.)  And so an email update from the realtor reads in part:

Another showing over the weekend didn’t go as well.  These folks found the main level very attractive but their major concern was the basement. The agent wrote “The amount of water that has seeped through the walls is off-putting.  These are folks from up north and so they are acutely aware of what it takes to solve an issue of that magnitude.”  They also mentioned  the bedroom window where the insect nest had been, the guns shells in the basement.  Definitely not prospects!

The wasp nests!  Errant shotgun shells!  Reading of those deal breakers made me not just a little sad; I can picture which window and that damp basement and its shoddy flooring and, oh.  This process has been the slowest ripping off of the band-aid.