Her friends back home gave the Marine who caught her fancy a nickname: Mr. When Laura met Jerrod in 2006, she was a combat medic on deployment in Alaska with the Nebraska Army National Guard. The decades compressed, like a time-lapse video. You can watch life unspool in those houses: party dresses and dapper Sunday suits in the dim backs of closets, Velcro shoes and denture cases under the sink. And usually, in the bathroom or leaning on the washer and dryer – walkers and lift belts, canes and commodes. Christmas decorations and board games for the grandchildren who once came to play. The good dishes, the paring knives, the placemats. I peruse the leftovers of long lives, laid out on card tables and kitchen counters.
Now I poke around estate sales, looking for mid-century treasures for my own brick ranch. When they built the house with the dining room my mom wanted in 1990, they offered to sell me my childhood home, a ’60’s brick ranch with oak floors they’d promptly covered in shag carpet. My parents had 66 years behind them when Dad died May 28, 2022. Jerrod and Laura are on the first lap of their married lives. Those first months, with a broken body that had once carried his kids on his shoulders and buckled into roller coasters with his grandkids, he prayed to go to sleep and wake up in heaven.īut as the end approached, he didn’t seem as sure, holding our hands with his salesman’s grip and not letting go. Hold onto your family, they are everything you need.ĭale and Arly Lange with their three children Kim, Rick and Cindy in the 1960s. Hold onto your stocks, you only lose money if you sell. The dining room table went off to Plymouth Avenue.ĭale Lange could still spin a yarn. To show me he hadn’t given up.īut by February of 2022, Dad was in hospice, and on his way down the long hallway in a wheelchair to assisted living.
He walked to please me, Mom told my sister later. He’d rest halfway, grumbling about the musical selections, and gratefully collapse in his recliner after our trek. I’d coax him down the hallway outside their apartment, with its hotel-patterned carpet and piped-in ’80s music, Dad shuffling to the beat of Queen and U2. Mom was his companion and caretaker, worrying over him, reading the newspaper aloud to him in the morning when his eyes failed, guiding his walker to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It’s a sturdy symbol of their philosophy: to walk lightly on the Earth.ĭad never recovered from that broken hip. “It’s our most utilitarian piece and it’s beautiful.” The table is perfect in their dining room, Laura says. “We saw your family’s ad and said, ‘Let’s jump on it,’” Jerrod remembers.
#Second life decorating free
Photo by Eric Gregory for the Flatwater Free Press The first-time homeowners closed on their house in February 2022 with a goal: to furnish it entirely with secondhand belongings.Īntique books, brass candlesticks and a plant from a local boutique grace Laura Yeramysheva-Bley and her husband Jerrod Bley’s mantel. Laura runs a small skincare business and is returning to school for her psychology degree this fall. Jerrod is the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s sustainability manager, finding ways to reduce waste and save energy. Jerrod Bley and Laura Yeramysheva-Bley live here with their fluffy dog and a trio of dark-haired children: Leopold, 4 Cora, 3 and baby Embry, a chubby and cheery 6-month-old.Īfter years of far-flung moves, they’ve settled in Lincoln where Laura – born in Azerbaijan – grew up, surrounded by her extended Armenian family. The two-story house is nearly 100 years old, covered in weathered cedar shingles. The dining room table found its next home on Plymouth Avenue. He grabbed the chairs, too, and the flat screen and the pale green armchair where Dad had lingered each morning for decades alongside my mom, in her matching chair.ĭale and Arly Lange, good neighbors and good people, reading the newspaper and plotting their day. Jerrod Bley simply answered a Facebook ad, handed over $100 and carted away that table where we had made so many memories. That dark-haired stranger didn’t know any of those things. Nine months later, he and Mom were leaving the roomy independent living apartment at Legacy Estates for a smaller place in assisted living. Provided by Cindy Lange-Kubickīy the time his hip snapped, he was 87, and the slow slide to the grave had gained momentum. Dale Lange sits in the green armchair where he spent his mornings reading newspapers and pondering his day.
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