Caregiving Journal 27-Aftermath

ev'rything that happens will happen today

and nothing has changed but nothing's the same

& ev'ry tomorrow could be yesterday

and ev'rything that happens could happen today

David Byrne

Shall we put this heavy coat with the Goodwill bags or the Abused Women’s Shelter stuff?  Do you want this mouse pin?  Does Carolyn or Stanley?  I think I want that sparkly scarf.  Throw that tattered hat away.

These are the decisions being made as my daughter, her husband and my husband sift through the huge amount of history in an old house.  It has taken 3 days to go through all my mother’s clothes, jewelry, scarves, shoes, wigs, hats.  We haven’t tackled any other room except her bedroom yet and in the midst of this challenge, the water heater broke.  We got a new one at Lowe’s and the day before yesterday we gals cleaned out a swath of the basement so the guys could unhook the old one and install the new one.  Turned out the wiring on the old one needed upgrading and when that was done it worked again.  So the new one is going back.  In the meantime, we fill bag after plastic bag with my Mom’s belongings of more than 60 years.

Because my daughter is here it is easier.  She can “compartmentalize”, as she says, blocking the emotion that might come from looking at a familiar piece of jewelry or a memorable dress.  If I were doing this on my own I would be stopping to moon over many of the things she quickly puts in a bag.

I have never had to go through an entire house of someone else’s possessions and decide what to do with them.  I’ve moved and had to make the “shall we take this or not” decisions, but that’s different.  This is personal in a way that makes me feel as if I am intruding, I am fumbling around in somebody else’s private rooms, I am not being respectful of their belongings.  But I am trying to be.  I pause to say, “Mom loved this shirt”, or “This is a beautiful scarf.  I haven’t ever seen it.”  I talked to Mom yesterday, telling her she really didn’t need all those scarves and wondering if she really used all of them, but then I remembered all the scarves I have and how few I actually wear often.  Like Mother like Daughter—and Granddaugher.  My daughter, Erin, responded to my musings by saying, “Mom, you can’t ever have too many scarves!”

So we laugh, sweat, pack, decide, keep the very nostalgic, throw away the shabby and rejoice that Goodwill and the Women’s Shelter will receive a bonanza of pretty women’s clothing and shoes, not to mention a wide variety of scarves.  Next we will begin on the hundreds of books in the living room….and the nick-knacks.

And every day we take home a few more bags of the “keepers”, the old photographs of ancestors from the early 1800s, notebooks of Mom’s writing assignments during her writer’s group years, a favorite shirt that was way too big for Mom, an old pearl turtle pin loved from childhood, a leopard print hat.  These are the keepsakes that will remind us of our Mom and Grandmother, as if we would need anything tangible for those memories to be with us.