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How did that house save his father’s life? It gave him something meaningful to work on.
What does Murphy mean when he says “the work of an old house is never meant to be done”? People enjoy the process of restoring old houses. What was Murphy’s father do every weekend throughout the year? Scrape and repaint the house.
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If cancer goes into remission…it becomes less severe.
If one’s illness is terminal…they are expected to die.
Murphy compares his house to a “squeaky old wheel” to show…it needed some repairs.
To restore something means…to make it the same as it was before.
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1. When that looming three-week deadline came and then went, he was still alive.
2. And at three months, he joined me.
3. We gutted and repainted the interior.
4. At six months, the old windows were refinished, and at 18 months, the rotted porch was finally replaced.
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He would spend all year scraping paint with this old heat gun and a spackle knife, and then he would repaint where he scraped, only to begin again the following year.
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Renovating the house saved his father’s life because it gave him purpose and meaning.
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At six months, the old windows were refinished, and at 18 months, the rotted porch was finally replaced.
Every weekend for as long as I can remember, my father would get up on a Saturday, put on a worn sweatshirt and he'd scrape away at the squeaky old wheel of a house that we lived in.
He would spend all year scraping paint with this old heat gun and a spackle knife, and then he would repaint where he scraped, only to begin again the following year.
My mother was on the line to tell me that doctors had found a lump in his stomach -- terminal cancer, she told me, and he had been given only three weeks to live.
