There was no funeral. Coraline’s dad, Buxton, had his wife cremated the next day. Buxton took a week off from work. He was a brainiac engineer doing something in the Defense Department and had been beaten up repeatedly by his wife.

Two days after her death, he had the kids take all of their mother’s clothes out of her closets and dressers and bag them up for Goodwill. He had the kids go through all their things that didn’t fit anymore, too, toys that no one wanted, furniture of no use, and they donated everything. They went through the house and bagged up all of the odd, useless things their mother collected and tossed the junk in a huge Dumpster he had brought in.

When the neighbors saw what was going on, we all went over to help. We joined members of Buxton’s family he hadn’t seen in years because Gloria wouldn’t allow visitors. The Big Clean Out was “in lieu” of a funeral. There were about thirty people there.

Everyone went through the yard and tossed out old and broken furniture, piles of scrap wood, broken lawn mowers, a tumble-down shed, and other junk that Gloria hoarded. Buxton opened the garage, and they started tossing things out from there, too, including two useless cars that were hauled away and two decrepit trailers on the side of the house. Three giant bins were towed in and out over three days.

By the time we were all done, the house had been mostly cleared.

Buxton ordered pizza for all of us, and the kids’ mouths dropped open. “Really?”

“Really.” Buxton smiled, and you could tell the man hadn’t had a lot of smiles in his life for a long time.

We had a neighborhood pizza party right there.

The improvements continued. The refrigerator and pantry lost the locks that their mother had fastened on them, and the shelves were filled with food. The kids bought clothes that fit. Buxton had the filthy carpets ripped out and replaced with wood floors. The windows were washed. The dishwasher hadn’t worked for a year, so he had a new one installed. The new oven worked well, too. He had the house scraped and painted yellow, at my mother’s suggestion, and a weekly housekeeper was hired.

All the kids, including the baby, started to smile and laugh, and they played outside now, with Buxton and with the other neighborhood kids.

What was wrong with Gloria? She was an alcoholic. She was a hoarder. Was there an underlying mental health or personality disorder there? Probably. But that doesn’t make her easier to live with, and she made everyone around her miserable, scared, starving, and mentally ill themselves. That was what led me to do nothing. I had let Gloria die. I did not warn her. I did not warn her husband.

It has always stuck with me, but I don’t regret it at all.