The Garage Sale China Cat with Broken Pieces

A Journey of Grief and Healing

“Name one specific memory you have of your father,” the trauma-informed counselor said.

I thought for a moment.

“Well, there was this china cat I found at a garage sale…” I began.

Growing up before Facebook Marketplace, garage sales were a big deal. We went to them and had them. Having a garage sale meant that we spent one night driving around putting signs up in the neighborhood. Sometimes our parents let us decorate the signs. Then, they would painstakingly write a price on a sticker for each item and borrow tables to set out from our aunt.

When morning came, I would wake up to a party. My grandparents would bring donuts and coffee. There would be pizza. And a bunch of people would come through and ask if the hand mixer worked, if we had antiques, and if the price was flexible.

My mom hated sales, so a lot of times she would end up giving things away — if it was a nice person. At most garage sales my parents made just enough money to cover the pizza and drinks. My dad laughed about the people who slowed down to look at our items just to speed away.

I loved having and going to garage sales. I guess I inherited the “it’s a good deal” gene from the grandparents that lived through the Great Depression. …And from my dad who always loved a bargain.

Once at a garage sale, my parents said we could pick out any item we wanted. I saw this china cat… or maybe it was a lion? with a soft cottony mane the color of sunshine, knowing eyes, and whiskers that looked real.

“I want this,” I proudly held up the treasure. My mom looked at it, probably wondering how much dust had accrued in the fuzzy mane over time. She suggested I might want something else? But no, this was the item for me.

I took it to show-and-tell, against the advice of my mom.

“You might break it,” she said.

She was probably also secretly afraid other kids might see a strange figurine with a few missing whiskers and a dusty mane and they wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore. But I took it anyway. My mom carefully wrapped it in a plastic bag and put it in my backpack.

The china cat made it through drop-off, show and tell, and pick-up.

However, when I got home and jumped out of the mini-van with the cat literally in the bag it broke into what seemed a thousand pieces.

I cried over that cat like it was alive and had just died. My mom assured me, that they would fix it.

But how? Even the fuzzy head was broken.

Still, I put it next to my dad’s 1980s brick of a computer which was the place-of-broken-things. It sat there until my dad could find the time and right glue to fix it. And until my finger got caught in a door.

While my mom was bandaging up my smashed finger, and drying my tears with a tissue, my dad quietly went and repaired my china cat. He brought it to show me. I wiped away my tears and smiled. That was a better fix than the ice pack my mom was putting on my finger.

I couldn’t believe that he had managed to fix it. So many pieces. I didn’t think it could be done.

I never took it to show-and-tell again. Instead, it sat in a place of importance next to my bed.

In all my purges of knick-knacks and china plates, the china cat still keeps its place of honor. It has one ear that wiggles a bit, and a few visible scars, but the broken pieces somehow fit back together. Not one piece had been lost.

Twenty years later, my dad died. It was completely unexpected. It was like a Flannery O’Connor story I had to read in college, that starts off in a picnic and ends in murder.

One day, my dad was alive and we were taking a trip in honor of my birthday. We visited special places together that we hadn’t been to since I was a child. We had more one-on-one time than we’d had in years.

Then the day after my birthday he became sick and in ten days he was dead. I never got to tell him goodbye.

I didn’t know how to process that kind of grief. Like the china cat, I had been shattered to pieces. But, I kept trying to hold it together. I’m not sure for who.

Standing there next to my dad’s cold body, a lady I barely knew told me I should let my brother grieve. I had no intention of not letting him.

But what about my grief?

I guarded my grief like a dragon guards its treasure. I stuffed it away in a backpack layered carefully with tissue paper and wrapped in plastic bags.

I took it with me to another country where no one knew me. I buried it in its own special grave and dived into orphan care to hold babies with no fathers.

The new job was cathartic. It was an escape. It was the emergency exit-only door you use when there is a fire in the building.

When I came home months later on a temporary visit, I realized I hadn’t escaped my grief by leaving. I had just delayed it and it was waiting for me when I got back.

There were places I hadn’t visited since my dad’s death. All the memories were overwhelming and the wounds I had carefully hidden suddenly opened back up again.

The broken pieces were still there. They were sitting there in the place where I had left them, waiting for the right glue to fix them.

But my dad wasn’t there.

Time alone doesn’t heal all wounds.

In August, it will be ten years since my dad died. I am finally unwrapping some of the tissue-layered boxes of grief. Touching the sharp, jagged edges with care, hunting down the right kind of glue. Piecing the memories back together. Both happy and sad.

You can’t just throw out the broken pieces or hide them away.

You have to hold onto the joy, even if it is inseparable from the pain.

You can’t run forever from grief. Or, you risk losing the gift you once had, the memories, and yourself.

The china cat is a piece of my childhood, a testimony to my dad, and an example for me to follow. It sits serenely and watches with knowing eyes. It lets me know that you can be whole even if you are broken. It’s okay for others to see that you have scars.

The scars bind the past to the present. In this way, the memories remain forever alive.

I enjoyed reading James Beta’s story You Can’t Go Home Again in the Memoirist Idol contest stories. There is something sweet and nostalgic about old childhood haunts. Check it out at the link below: