Processing A Lot….

Personal experience: Just so much-Parent loss, over 30 years of trash, last night in home

About a year and half ago, one week had more change than an entire year: Tuesday morning, my father passed away, Tuesday evening, I got my keys to my new apartment an hour and a half away from my parents, Thursday morning-my fathers funeral, Saturday morning-have my mom start living a year and half at my sisters with her stuff still in her home, Saturday evening and Sunday morning-move myself into my new apartment, Monday-start new job.

Since that week, I have been driving round trip almost every weekend, starting late on Friday night and returning late on Sunday so that my mom could “clean out the house.” Cleaning of course never happened.

For those of you out there who are like me… like my family… I urge you to remember that emotional connection to items to not replace the person. For a year and half, we have been finding/throwing out/shredding and fighting over things were unnecessary. When I say unnecessary, I mean AARP magazines from 1980s… We didn’t even live in this state in 1980s.

There were so many wonderful things we got from when my great aunts and grandparents passed over 20 years ago. But, it just sat in the garage, untouched since they got there. Beautiful items meant to be displayed and enjoyed were broken, because that is what time does to physical things over time. Beautiful china, historical newspapers, antique furniture are representations of the lost person in the worse way because they are broken, dust, ripped, waterlogged, and destroyed.It didn’t need to be like this, but my parents didn’t have the means to display and take care of them. Why did we hold on to it when my cousins probably could have enjoyed it?

Though there are certain things, that even when broken, can have a place in our hearts and still enjoyed, so much of it has become too much. It is too much for a few people to go through and individually measure the emotional (and maybe even monetary) value. It took my parents over 30 years to collect all of those physical representations of memory.

It would take over 30 years to go through it all again. IT IS TOO MUCH.

These are Items my parents just couldn’t part with but also never enjoyed again, aside from the knowledge it was “somewhere in there.” Layers of thick dust piled high over old magazines, news paper clippings, art work, and other things with outdated information. It covered me in a hazy layer the physical manifestation of allergies, sickness, and asthma. If all of this was all so important, then why were they technically already discarded? This stuff became trash years ago because it took years to get beyond the point of destroyed. Why couldn’t we have thrown it out when it was time?

I beg you, hoarders of the world, do not do this to your children and family members. Enjoy the people, make those memories, but if it means so much to you that you want to pass it on, keep what you can take care of so the future generations can enjoy. Otherwise, it will become part of the “why did we keep this” pile. If it becomes part of the mystery of items that you want to find again years later, but when you try to recall, aren’t sure where it is, it looses its sentimental value.

Well, if you got through to this point, it is finally moving day. We are putting items into the moving truck while I duck out cough up dust clouds. But, guess what… is that stuff going anywhere to be immediately unpacked? NO. Why? Because it is going to a storage unit. The cycle continues.

I love my mom. Memories of my father are with me. But, I am not going to be able to hold onto things after that storage unit looses its value. And neither is my sister. And neither will my cousins.