Mold, Memories & Sympathy Cards

A reflection on grief

By Troy Alan Cox

06/06/2026

Mold

I have to remove the carpet from my father’s master bedroom.

It is something that needd to be done for almost two years, but dementia is a cruel disease. The brain slowly loses its ability to communicate with the body. Once my father could no longer get his legs to work and became bedbound, the carpet became the last thing to think about.

This week, two months after Easter — the first time I was sure he was going to pass — I began removing a small section of the carpet.

Underneath the padding, I found one of the worst fears of any Florida homeowner: a large amount of growth. Some of it may be disintegrating padding. Some of it may be dust. But the black swirls are what concern me most.

Immediately, I remembered all the times my father told me he could smell mold in his room.

Unfortunately, the master ensuite had plumbing problems before we ever took on this fixer-upper. After multiple plumber bills and repeated overflows, the carpet was always going to have to go.

Then came the dementia diagnosis.

That diagnosis followed lung cancer, which we battled for three years. It followed the leaky heart valve cardio adventure that lasted another year. It followed the unexplained dizziness that started the whole journey. It followed what I call the terrible year: nine serious falls in twelve months, including a skull hematoma.

I will be processing, for a long time, the trauma of coming home after a day of work with a dozen yellow roses for my father on Father’s Day, only to find him face down in a large pool of coagulated blood from a fall.

And now, the mold spores.

I have to stop the carpet work and immediately remove all of his belongings.

All the photos I unpacked and hung on the wall to keep him company.

All the books and photo albums he spent hours writing in and logging.

The clothing.

The dresser.

The keepsakes.

I have to inspect everything to make sure the mold has not spread.

This means I have to box up my father’s life and try not to think about the symbolism of that.

As a highly sensitive person, everything I look at and touch carries the emotional, physical, spiritual, and historical weight of the Titanic. So I have to put on blinders, fill boxes, and pray his keepsakes are not infected.

Memories

My father loved making photo albums.

He wrote in them all the time: dates, people’s names, places, details. He wanted to tell me the stories.

I have a real challenge looking at photo albums.

I do not only see the image. I feel the era. I feel the hopes and dreams. I feel the love and life of that particular moment. I feel an energetic connection to each person in the image, whether I know them or not.

I look at a photo and wonder:

Who was taking the picture?

Was it staged or spontaneous?

What happened before and after this moment?

Why did that person choose that outfit?

What did the rest of that day hold?

It is very heavy, and I cannot control it.

As I box up the albums I still cannot look at, I hear my father’s voice in my head:

“Son, let me show you this picture here. It has a good story.”

And I hear myself responding:

“I’m sorry, Dad. I can’t look at any pictures of my mother yet. It’s still too hard for me.”

Tears streamed down my face then.

They stream now, too, as I wish I had been able to say yes so I could know the story.

There are boxes and boxes of remaining albums. I do not know the stories inside them. I am not sure if I will ever be able to look at them.

I think of my mother and father as a young couple starting their life with so many hopes and dreams. I think of all they could not have known was coming.

They never could have imagined that one day their second-born child would be tragically killed in a careless highway mishap.

They never could have known that their remaining son would never start a family of his own.

Their hopes and dreams have no one obvious to hand them down to.

Their story now rests in these boxes.

Sympathy

As I type this, I am sitting beside a moderate stack of sympathy cards.

Some are from people I know. Some are from acquaintances. Some are from people who feel almost like strangers.

Almost all of them are from people I would not have expected.

And I find myself wondering:

Where are the names of the people who knew and loved my parents when they were here?

Something happens in grief, especially when you are the last of the bloodline from your direct family. The brain stops glossing over the way people in your life show up — or do not show up.

I have no capacity for the ones who complain and say they are sorry, but were never here when things were getting bad.

Even people one may have known for a very long time may find it too difficult to send a sympathy card.

The cards range from religious to funny. The words are comforting or guiding. Some are beautiful. Some are simple.

But none of them make me feel better about the people who were too busy to be here. The ones who said they would show up and did not.

I am trying to have sympathy for those who want to see how I am, but then complain about all of their own problems, as if I can even hear the words they are saying right now.

It is hard to have sympathy for others when I cannot yet fully have sympathy for myself.

Five years that were supposed to be fun with my father became years of caregiving, medical appointments, emergencies, decisions, physical labor, fear, and long hours.

Mostly alone.

Sympathy is such a strange word.

“Friendship is sewn with love and measured by kindness.”

— From a random sympathy card in the pile

Troy Alan Cox

06/06/2026