Susan Sauer sat quietly in the living room of her childhood home looking at "stuff".
Her father had recently passed away and as the only child of Wilbur and Natalie Booth, she was designated executor of their estate. Her mother had passed a few years earlier and her father was left alone to fend for himself in the tiny little house she grew up in. It was smaller than she remembered as a child, and it had been a few years since she was back home, and everything seemed old and foreign to her now.
Her father's health was failing over the last several months, but he told no one -- during the conversations he did have with his daughter, he never let on that he was in pain -- dying of a slow growing cancer that only his doctor knew about and was sworn to secrecy over. Susan made a habit of calling her dad once a week on Sunday evenings to check in on him and in those conversations, he always tried to be cheerful and upbeat. She noticed too late that he was becoming withdrawn and quieter with each week and when she got the call from his next-door neighbor that her father has passed, she cried out in shock and dropped the phone.
Susan's husband Bill tried to console his wife but the guilt she felt over not being more in tune with her father racked her -- she fell into a depression and lashed out at Bill for moving her to another state for his job years earlier -- away from her mother and father and her hometown outside Detroit. It was a silly argument and Susan knew her husband had to go where the work was at the time and she supported his decision, but she needed SOMEONE to blame for not being there for her father.
The house was musty and smelled old -- Her father had done the best he could, but you could see the signs of disrepair as his health deteriorated -- leaky faucets, untrimmed hedges, grass long in need of cutting and weeding. Susan didn't know where to begin or how to separate what few valuables remained from the junk.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice Bill coming into the living room until he spoke up.
"Hey, babe -- how's it going?"
She glared at her husband and then softened when she saw the look of concern on his face. Bill was geeky tall, 6'2 -- rail thin, with a pasty complexion and thinning hair. They had been married for 18 years and while she loved him dearly, he certainly wasn't the wild man she fell in love with almost 20 years ago. He had a slight middle-aged pouch and a "Dad Bod", but he was a good man -- a decent provider and a solid husband and father to the kids.
For her part, Susan prided herself in keeping a trim figure -- she was barely 5'3 with curly brown hair and smallish breasts which she wished were bigger. But she still got a lot of attention when they were out because of her slender legs and a tight little ass she worked hard to keep firm and round. Like a lot of women, she knew what worked well for her and despite her conservative nature, loved to wear short skirts that hugged that tiny butt and showed off her legs. She was a big fan of 4-inch heels that accentuated those God given gifts.
Susan sighed and reached out to Bill for a hug. He wrapped his arms around his tiny wife and held her close...her breasts pressed against his stomach, and he kissed the top of her head, not sure what he should say or do...They held their embrace for about a minute until Susan pulled away.
"Bill, I'm really lost here -- I'm thinking we should just go through everything in the house and separate the wheat from the chaff -- we can put the good stuff in the trailer, and anything left over, we can hire one of those companies that clean up houses to haul away the rest. I don't see a lot of value here, but maybe you do?"
Bill looked down at her and nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me...I found a few things upstairs that you might be interested in and there were some tools in the basement that I want. I'll bring everything here in the living room and we can sort through it."
Susan smiled -- at least they had a plan. They both had analytical minds -- She was a bookkeeper for a bank, and he was a computer tech guy. She never really understood what he did but between the two of them, they made a good enough salary to own a home in the suburbs of Philadelphia and raised two great kids.
Bill disappeared upstairs and she heard him coming down the stairs. Suddenly, a trumpet blast pierced the silence, making her jump.
"Bill!" she cried out as he emerged from the hallway with a grin on his face, holding a brass trumpet in one hand and a box in the other.
"I found these upstairs in your parent's bedroom," he said. "Isn't this your father's trumpet from his old days in that blues band?"
Susan smiled when she saw it...It had been years since he played but she remembered it fondly. He was so alive and happy then. As a child, she seldom saw him play because the band he was in always played late at night after they went to bed, or he was somewhere else practicing. On a few occasions, the band would come to their home to practice or try out new songs. She was intrigued by the rest of the band. They were all about her father's age, some a little younger, but so different than him. They were loud, fun and a bit obnoxious. And except for her dad and the keyboard player, they were black.
Susan's mother always sat in on their practice sessions -- the men were so full of life, and everyone laughed, drank, and kidded around with each other until late in the evening. Susan and her brother were not allowed to stay up on school nights, but on the occasional Saturday night, they would sit in the back like they were spectators in a movie watching the band rehearse. Occasionally, Susan's mother would bring the men fresh drinks and they would laugh and tease her -- trying to wrap their arms around her or grab her ass playfully. Like Susan, her mother was a tiny thing and in retrospect, and was where Susan got her sexy butt as well. For his part, Susan's father was a good sport and would laugh when the guys tried to put the moves on his wife -- it never got out of hand and was all in good fun.
Susan asked Bill what was in the box -- he said he found some old 8mm home movies in the closet and had held them up to the light -- it was film of her father playing his trumpet or during performances from years ago. Susan brightened immediately and told him to show her. Bill fished one of the reels out of the box and unwound a section of the brown film, holding it up to the light for her to see. Susan agreed it was of the band and told Bill to be careful with the reels -- that they looked old and dried out and easily breakable.
Bill put the box in the car and mentioned to her that they should try to get them converted to CD -- he knew a company that took old pictures or video and moved it to CD for prosperity and he'd look up the information for her. He was happy to see her smile and when he got back into the house, he found Susan trying to blow into the horn with limited success.
He laughed and told her trumpet wasn't the easiest thing to play but he was glad it wasn't a tuba...They both laughed at the idea of that. Susan ran her fingers up and down the length of the trumpet and pushed the keys up and down, reliving some of the memories of her father.
While Bill and Susan were different in many ways, they both had an appreciation for music...Susan obviously from her father and Bill's mother played guitar. Their taste was sophisticated enough for complex Jazz and blues and later, when Bill found a box of old 33 records and a player in the attic, they agreed to keep them and check them out when they got home.
Susan thumbed through the box -- some of the jazz was more modern -- Thelonious Monk, Chick Correa and John McLaughlin -- others more classic, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. Among the blues albums, she found Buddy Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker and of course, Robert Johnson.
She stared at the covers, running her fingers over the dark faces of the legends of blues and remembered hearing her parents playing these albums as a young child. Both she and Bill enjoyed the blues, but their kids thought they were crazy, so they stopped playing them around the children.
Now that they were older and more on their own, Bill and Susan would occasionally put a Chicago blues channel on Pandora and enjoy the sounds of the "oldies". Susan remembered one night not long after they were married, listening to a BB King album and making passionate love to Bill -- she discovered a few weeks later that she was pregnant with their first and always credited the blues for making that happen.