“She’s hysterical!”

That’s how the mover described me to his partners who were sitting in the parked van in the driveway of my new home this month.

I was not hysterical. But I was a woman in a strange, barren room, eyes red and swollen from tears, feeling all alone and desperately wanting the day to end.

The movers asked if there was something they could move for me, figuring that might stop the tears. I shook my head no.

They had done enough damage: They were several hours late, they broke my kitchen light fixture and broke my kitchen faucet in the new home — among other things. I had cut my finger trying to clean up one of their messes and blood flowed from it as I scrambled to recall where I’d packed bandages.

Look, moving is never easy and you expect some collateral damage in the process. I’ve moved at least 10 times in my life, including two cross-country moves. But this would be the toughest move of my life — perhaps because I am older and have more stuff. Or, because of the times, I faced some new challenges. Or maybe it was just the melancholy of aging that makes change harder? Or the fact that it would connect my childhood with my dad to my adulthood without him.

Perhaps it was all of the above. Regardless, it was unusually tough, but it did provide life lessons on what to do, who to trust and what really matters.

I chose this

The first thing I had to remind myself as I went through the stress and rigors of home buying, selling, packing and moving was that I chose this path.

I had a nice house in a nice neighborhood in Livonia. I didn’t have to move.

But I found a house in a nearby neighborhood that I always coveted in the city and that offered me some amenities I didn’t have, such as a bigger backyard, a bright and airy kitchen, a year-round Florida room in a beautiful neighborhood filled with renovated old homes and country charm.

I wasn’t looking to move. It just happened after I saw a lovely ranch for sale, listed on social media. The listing agent was an agent I’d worked with before and trusted. I texted her asking to see the house, even though I was not optimistic I’d get it. It was just that, well, homes rarely come up for sale in this neighborhood and those that do are usually too big and too pricey for me.

This one was a possibility and I'd been frugal for years to save up. But I still considered it out of my league.

Dad and the big bike

I grew up in Livonia and when my dad would periodically get laid off from his job at the old Burrough’s facility in Plymouth, my mom supported the family. She’d back the car out of the driveway each morning and as she turned the corner, I’d look up at my dad and say: “What do you say we get the big bike and go for a ride?”

My parents were older when they had me, in their 40s. My dad served in World War II and they grew up in the Great Depression. They were resilient and practical.

Where a toddler today would have a fancy bike seat, helmet and knee pads to ride on the back of dad’s bike, I sat side-saddle on an old rug my dad wrapped around the bar of a man’s bike and secured with duct tape. I held on to the front handlebars as my dad peddled us around town. There were no helmets on either of our heads and I was fearless. We only wiped out one time and I survived to adulthood.

One of the neighborhoods we would ride through was this neighborhood where the coveted ranch sat, about two miles from where I grew up. It is filled with hilly, curvy, tree-lined streets. A wooded ravine runs through it and a beautiful private park sits in the heart of it. Even as I got older, my dad and I would ride our bikes (this time I had my own bike) through this neighborhood and I would imagine which house I’d like to live in.

My dad died in 2007, but he was with me every minute of this process because I somehow defied all the odds and experienced tiny miracles along the way to end up with a house here.

Money over melancholy

When buying or selling a home, you have to surrender control and allow destiny to take over. This is a hard concept for many to embrace, especially me, a control freak who craves organization.

You also can’t emotionally buy a house before you actually buy the house because too much can go sideways. Even if the seller accepts your offer, there is the perilous appraisal process.

In my case, I wrote the sellers a letter with my offer, telling them about bike rides with my dad through the neighborhood and my dream to live there. It was one of the reasons they accepted my offer. But then the house appraised lower than my offer. The sellers would have to come down and I would have to offer up cash to meet at a price in the middle for it to work.

I figured it was over. Money matters more than melancholy and the sellers would likely never come down as much as I needed and I’d never have the cash to go as high as they would like. They'd probably want to re-list the house or just stay put.

I spent a weepy Sunday in August coming to terms with my fate. The dream was dead. I thanked my dad for getting me this far and I went to visit my 93-year-old mother at the nursing home that afternoon. That’s when the next miracle happened. Despite her deep dementia, mom looked me in the eye and, with acute clarity, said: “They want too much money for that. Stick to your guns, that’s a lot of money. They have to come down.”

I had never told my mom about my house purchase because of her dementia. So I asked her what she meant. She said: “The land. You are buying land.” I have no way to explain how she knew this. All I could do was say, “Thank you.” And I meant it. I had my mom back, even if only for a minute, at a critical juncture in my life.

More:Visiting my mom through glass was supposed to be temporary. Now it feels endless.

Purge before packing

The next miracle was that it did work out.

I had acted fast enough to secure a good interest rate for my new mortgage. My agent did a fantastic job negotiating a fair deal for both sides, even sacrificing part of her commission to make it happen. This is the third house she has either sold or bought for me.

My former house sold for the price that I wanted and it appraised. Now came the time to uproot the last nine years of my life to move.

The first thing I learned was I had way too much stuff. The purging process had to happen before the packing process.

After donating and trashing a lot, I went about collecting boxes from grocery stores to avoid paying for pricey moving boxes. Here’s some hints: Egg boxes are good for smaller loads and plant boxes from Meijer’s are ideal for bigger items, including lamps. The print newspaper became an economical bubble wrap.

One cost-savings way to move clothing: Contractor bags. You can get a box of 50 for about $15 at a hardware store and turn them into garment bags. It beats spending $25 to $30 for just one wardrobe box.

My uncle is a professional artist, so he and my aunt are used to moving lots of artwork. They came over with their van and bubble wrap to load up my paintings and other valuables to drive to the new house ahead of time rather than trust them to movers. Another lesson: Lean on family when you need help.

A nightmare move

The next lesson: Be careful who you trust.

I grew up taking people at their word. Either I am incredibly naïve or times — and people — are changing. The moving company had good reviews and I had a rapport with the woman I talked to on the phone, so I booked it.

My move was scheduled for a 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. window. The movers did not show up until 2 p.m. When I repeatedly called the company to get an estimated time of arrival, no one answered the phone. I spent hours panicking that they were going to be no-shows and I'd have to find last-minute movers to get me out of my old house fast.

Once the movers and I got to the new house it was early evening and it was chaos. They were throwing boxes everywhere and not listening to my requests. The sellers had left me a cold beer in their fridge. But when I turned my back, the movers lifted that old refrigerator to move it without taking the beer out. The door swung open and down went the beer, shattering across the garage floor. I raced to clean it, cutting my hand on the glass as I mopped up the beer.

Bring a friend

But it got worse. They removed the doors on my new refrigerator to get it in the house through a window because it would not fit through any of the doorways.

One door was left half on it, dangling — I was sure it would break. A neighbor watching the effort to hoist the disemboweled machine through the window told me later she had to look away.

Miraculously, the refrigerator still works. But in the process, the movers damaged a light fixture and destroyed the kitchen faucet. The mover fixed the light fixture on the spot, for which I am grateful. He said his boss would send someone to replace and install a new faucet the next day. It never happened. His boss would not take my calls, he texted me once asking for a photo of the broken faucet. Then he went silent.

Despite my calls and emails to the company, no one will respond to me to offer compensation or even an apology. When I read deeper into the reviews of this moving company, I see other customers said this company stopped taking and returning their calls too when they had problems. I added my negative review to the list.

Lesson: You need another person with you to supervise movers because amid chaos, you can’t have eyes in the back of your head. In some cases, you need a witness.

What fills a house, makes a home

It was close to 8:30 that night when I stood there in my tired and tearful state wanting the move to end. All that kept going through my mind was that I wanted my dogs.

It really didn’t matter where the couch was placed, where the dresser went or what to do with some 50 boxes piled up in the house. I just wanted the one thing that truly makes a house a home: The occupants and family. In my case, that's my two beloved companion dogs.

I drove to dog daycare after 9 p.m. and brought them to their new home. It was a rough night, they wouldn’t come inside the house until the early morning hours. After I walked them a bit, we ventured into my new backyard and there lay two deer sleeping and I knew then that it was all worth it.

We were home.

The next day, I dug out my bike from behind the boxes and went for a ride, thinking of dad.

Contact Jamie L. LaReau at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: A nightmare move to realize a dream shared with dad