Aging, Attics and Aortas.

Peer into the drama, laughs and lessons I uncovered helping seniors move.

I’m an Accidental Archaeologist. 

Despite a solid sales career, I knew God did not put me on this earth to hound Vice Presidents of Very Important Things to take meetings with me. I wasn’t born to update Salesforce. God gave me talents, for sure. A little better than average when it came to smarts. Outgoing. Hardworking. Taking a chance with this limited set of skills, I walked away from a cozy paycheck to open a downsizing business, one that helped senior citizens move from long time family homes into smaller apartments. My love of people, of projects, and the idea of “home” led me into this niche industry perhaps you didn’t even know existed.

After weeks of trying to drum up business, in February 2020, I landed my very first client! A trusting lady, Nancy*, was actually going to pay me to manage & execute the move from her home of 42 years into a senior living community. I smiled every second I was on the job. Me with my brown bag lunch and multi-pocket, double-knee work pants. What a fantastic turnabout from my days in four-inch heels and expense account happy hours. Rather than pitching pricy software to corporate leaders, I was now helping an overwhelmed 80-something sort out mementos from her years as a Braille instructor and if she really needed clothes in dry-cleaning bags from 1982. Instead of working the room at a networking breakfast, I was now folding orange and yellow crochet afghans just right so sweet Nancy beamed when she walked in her new apartment for the first time.

This is perfect, I thought. 

Fast forward to December 2023. My husband (now part of the business after retiring from tech leadership) and I were hosting the annual Christmas party for our team, four members strong. My heart was full and bubbly, like a sloshing third glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve. I did it. I built a business that helped people, at their neediest time, using my God-given talents.

As my team and I worked with our elderly clients, we touched all parts of their lives. Stories - and ghosts of long ago troubles- got stirred up as we helped clients sort through forgotten boxes in abandoned attics. Like archaeologists scraping away layers of earth to reveal a buried relic, we uncovered so much about our clients and about ourselves. These stories, heartwarming, tear-jerking and even laugh-inducing, were the work bonuses I never saw coming. 

There was our client, Mike*, who never cracked a smile. Not once. He was being forced out of his home by the county. Too many 911 calls, the court decreed: He needed to be in an Assisted Living apartment. “Pack up what you want. I don’t care,” Mike said the day we met. Then, looking away, he added “if you happen to find a Purple Heart somewhere in here, I would like to have it. It’s my son’s. The day he died I threw it. I don’t remember what room I was in… it was 20 years ago… I’d been drinking.” 

We made it our mission to reunite that medal with Mike, whom we now saw as a mourning father rather than just an ol’ sourpuss. “It was in the spare bedroom, behind a dresser,” I said as I proudly handed the Purple Heart to him. All I got in return for the hours scavenging the unkempt wreckage that was Mike’s house was a gruff “thanks”-  but it was enough. We wore out our hands and knees searching every inch of the place and I truly believe Mike gave all that he was capable of in that grunt of gratitude. “Doing your best” looks different on everyone, I learned that day.

Other clients gave us windows into what we wanted our later years to look like. There was Pete and Suzy* who didn’t talk to each other. They shouted in each other’s general direction. Worse yet, they wanted me to mediate their bombastic throw downs. One such row was over keeping thirty-years-unused camping gear because maybe one day she’ll take the grandchildren camping.

Driving home from their downsizing project each day, I sat in silence. Alone in my own thoughts, I was curious how Pete and Suzy got to this scream-fest of a place. After a few weeks, the team and I uncovered clues to learn the source of their anger. Pete devoted his life to his career and made little time for Suzy over the years: His home office, brimming with corporate awards, told the tale. Her kitchen desk was full of grandchildren’s artwork and photos of her garden-club friends. Suzy had built a life independent from Pete. When Pete retired, he readily booked them on a 21-day ocean cruise … which would take Suzy out of the very full, and home-centered, life she crafted for herself. Now understanding the push and pull of their past 40 years I was able to offer meaningful compromises, gently helping them see their spouse’s point of view. (They kept just one tub of Suzy’s most sentimental camping cookware. The mouse-nibbled sleeping bags went away!) At the end of their move, Pete wrote me a note saying our team did the impossible: We helped him and his wife blend his retirement vision and her life vision. He ended the note by calling me a “blessing.” I still have it framed in my office.

My heart, the emotional one that drove me to serve my clients, was filled.

My heart, the actual one beating in my chest, was tired. 

Somewhere over the preceding months, my usual Energizer Bunny pep had gone missing. Something was off. I was still working just as hard as Taylor Swift’s publicist, but now nine hours of sleep wasn’t enough and on busy work days I would often sneak a snooze or two in my car.

A few doctor visits unraveled the mystery: I have a birth defect in my aortic valve and, after 56 years of working just fine, the valve was crapping out. “Your heart is working too hard to pump blood through failing flaps and blood is regurgitating backwards. It explains your fatigue,” the doc said. “This valve issue has also allowed an aortic aneurysm to form,” he added.

“Great,” I quipped, “another sagging body part,” not grasping the situation.

Open heart surgery would happen in the next year or so, the doc continued. I crumbled listening to him. Cracking my sternum. Stopping my heart and hooking me up to a bypass machine. The thought of it bounced dumbfounded tears into my eyes. The doc must be talking about someone else, right?

“Your job now is to get yourself as healthy as possible in preparation for surgery- lose 20 pounds, walk three miles a day and reduce your stress to as near zero as you can,” he said.

All I could think was “Reduce stress? Has that man ever run a small business? Stress is our gasoline!” I also thought of my husband, my children, my friends and my siblings. I owed it to them to sail through surgery and recovery. Hell, I owed it to ME. I didn’t want someone else to be the archaeologist digging through my things because I didn’t survive surgery, wondering “Why didn’t Anne Marie better prepare for surgery? What clues can we find here?”  

One evening, a few months after learning I’d need open heart surgery, I was too tired from work to be vertical for one more moment. I collapsed onto the sofa and said to my husband “I’m done. It’s done.” He knew what I was talking about: We had discussed retirement after that fateful cardiologist appointment and how we would know when the time was right. Just like I had counseled many clients, it was time to let go. 

“Okay,” my husband said. “We’ll retire. You take those long walks and finally write all the client stories you have stored up in your head.” 

Now, I write. Just like before, I swapped out my work life. Gone are packed lunches and work pants, replaced by hot coffee and a laptop. Look to this Substack often for new senior downsizing client stories about growing older, the treasures you accumulate, intricate family dynamics and all sorts of lessons and laughs uncovered along the way. 

* Client names and details have been changed to protect their privacy.