Truoc picked Dad up at the airport after his last trip to Reno. He did his banking for him, paid his bills. Took him to the doctor, picked up prescriptions. Mainly, I think, is that Truoc was THERE for him.
Now, Truoc took it quite hard when Dad passed away. He told us that my dad was his best friend. He was unable to be with us when it happened, and was unable to 'see' Dad before the funeral arrangements had been carried out.
I think that Dad thought that Truoc would either sell the belongings in the house or take them and get a place of his own (he was renting a room from someone). However, the magnitude of the task left to him was more than he (Truoc) was prepared to meet. I mean, it is a WHOLE HOUSE full of stuff - from personal mementos to large appliances and everything in between. The terms of Dad's trust were that Truoc would have 45 days to empty out the house before we would come in and prepare it for sale (or whatever we decided to do with it).
On the last day of our stay in February/March, we were talking with Truoc and finally realized that he was trying to tell us very, very obliquely that he was interested in buying Dad's home. Well, wouldn't THAT take a load off of our shoulders! He was willing to take it in As-Is condition, and we would discount the price of the home by a certain percentage because of that. We left, giving him instructions to go get pre-qualified for a home loan so we could work out details.
I'm not sure how many days (30 at least) went by before we talked to Truoc and realized that he had NOT gone to get pre-qualified. He had misunderstood (this was to become a common occurrence) and thought that our asking price was out of his range, so he just didn't do anything. Well, that's okay, I guess, except that he also had not done anything to start cleaning out the house, either. I explained again that he COULD afford the home, but we couldn't do anything until he got pre-qualified. Eventually the message got through, and he got in touch with a banking person. We got occasional updates along the lines of "I need to get [this] paperwork to her," "They're checking my credit report," and finally, "We're just waiting for final approval."
Yay, right? Well, by this time it's April. What happens in April? I get laid off. I tell Mr. W. on Thursday night. I fly to Missouri on Friday morning. Friday afternoon Truoc's loan officer calls and says he's approved. Timing, timing, timing.
Mr. W. broke the bad news to Truoc after we'd finally decided to move to Vancouver. He told him that now he was pre-qualified he could still go find a place to buy and everything would work out. (He said it with a bit more clarity and charm, but that was the gist.) He even offered to give Truoc extra time to move the stuff out of the house, found a storage unit close by that could store the stuff if he hadn't found/closed on a home by the time we needed to move up, offered to pay for 3 months storage, and said we'd keep the piano at the house for an extra amount of time so that he didn't have to pay for temperature-controlled storage. Whadda guy, eh? Actually, our new neighbors thought that was quite generous, but geez - the poor guy was overwhelmed with all the STUFF, about to try to buy his first house ever, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, we weren't there yet and we had the time to give to him.
Fast forward to the end of May, when we drive up to Vancouver to start getting the house ready to move in. We walk into the house and find everything exactly the way that we left it three months before. Even the floral arrangement that my colleagues at Agilent had sent was still where we left it (a bit crunchy, but intact). We get in touch with Truoc, have him come over, and tell him that we are HERE, so he needs to get the stuff packed up and out. Our main concern was the little stuff at first, things that could go into boxes. We figured there was still a little time until we would bring in our furniture, so the couch/tables/etc. could be a bit lower in priority.
The problem was that he didn't have anywhere to put the stuff. For some reason, he was not 'into' the idea of a storage unit, probably because he didn't know what to do with the stuff after the 3 months that we had offered to pay. He did, however, come over frequently as his work schedule permitted and pack up and move out as much as he could to his rented room.
After being here only a short while we realized something about Truoc. When he gets overwhelmed or doesn't know what to do, he just doesn't do anything. He hadn't found a house to buy and hadn't figured out what to do with the stuff. He didn't want to inconvenience us with all the stuff (though we offered to do the packing and donating of stuff he didn't want), but he also didn't have anywhere to put it.
Next: So, How's the Weather Up There?
