I'm most concerned about the fridge.

It's not that it isn't sad that two people died, but let's face the facts here; both Farrah and Michael had minimal impact on my life. Sure I danced to a couple of Michael's songs in my youth, but I never owned one of his albums. And Farrah was certainly nice to look at, but couldn't hold my interest with her acting.

My refrigerator, however, was full of groceries and when I got home from a day trip last Thursday, the house had that food-going-bad smell.

I guess I shouldn't be that sad about the fridge. I could have called the repairman to come and give it CPR or a new compressor or whatever it takes to bring it back to life. But, in all honesty, no one really liked that refrigerator.

Oh, it kept the food cold enough and it wasn't loud or anything. It's just that it's a side-by-side. Refrigerators aren't meant to be vertical; you can't store a pizza in the freezer or a party platter in the fridge with a side-by-side.

After each grocery shopping trip, curses were hurled at the fridge as we tried to fit horizontally designed packages into a vertical freezer. I guess we had driven out its will to live.

Some guys will be showing up sometime today to haul off the carcass to be recycled and bring us a nice new fridge. During the past week, we've had to live like we're on a camping trip, right down to driving to town to get hotdogs or whatever.

Upon the fridge's death, the only media circus was me, and all the interviews I did to find out what happened came up empty. There were no tears and no makeshift shrines dedicated to its memory.

No blogs have speculated on the fridge's last hours or whether there was a will. No television trucks were camped outside our house and the fridge's "spiritual advisor" did not go on CNN to talk about the fridge's drug use.

There wasn't any retrospective specials on CBS or documentaries on NBC about my fridge's battle against its illness.

There haven't been any jokes about my fridge's odd behavior and no clips have been shown of the refrigerator's appearance on David Letterman.

It was as obscure in death as it was in life.

But it did have a family that, if not loving it, at least respected its purpose.

It's experience with drugs was limited to serving as a medicine chest — its top was a shelf with bottles of Pepto-Bismol, cold medicine, aspirin, naproxen and Tylenol. There was sidewalk chalk up there and a candy-filled Halloween pumpkin bucket dating back to 2005. (How do these things pile up?)

The fridge's sides and front served as a family scrapbook, calendar and to-do list. There were photos of the kids from infancy to last week. There was a photo of last year's Christmas tree, which was placed there after the younger son became distraught when the tree was taken down after the holidays. Along those lines, was a pair of Christmas lists hiding underneath a school calendar. There was artwork, assembled with care and addressed to "Mom" and sometimes "Dad."

There were some old newspaper columns, some written by me, some written by and about people I know.

Now the fridge has been stripped naked; waiting to be taken away to its final resting place. Or to be given a new heart to make some other family happy. (It does have an icemaker.) And all that stuff that came off will be sorted and possibly be put upon the new fridge.

It just won't be the same though. But I know I can work through my grief and move on.

Contact Rory McClannahan at 823-7102 or online at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .