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Sweeping up the house and putting love away
When my parents downsized the home they'd lived in since 1973, they moved the most treasured books and furniture and objects to the semi-detached house I'm sitting in now. Everywhere I look, I see things that remind me of my childhood. The dementia ward encourages you to bring your own furniture, so now I'm looking around to try to decide what would make Mom feel most at home and what pictures or ornaments she would particularly find comforting. It's a small room. Mom is still extremely angry and doesn't want anything moved because that would imply she's staying there and she isn't. I did bring up some family photographs, which she's enjoying, and will bring another batch later.
This sorting is doubly hard, because I'm asking both what are the essential objects to Mom and which are the essential objects to me. The tall silver Japanese vase, the Swedish sewing table (mineminemine), Dad's collection of Captain Midnight decoder badges, the ruby glass vase. All of them say Mom and Dad and my childhood; they're saturated with it. Leaving aside arguments with my brother -- which I actually don't expect, we've talked about it -- I can't keep everything that reminds me of my home. My parents lived a much more elegant life than I do. The ruby glass vase isn't us; it's Mom and Dad and Great-Aunt Mary, but it's not our sort of thing. The enormous panels of Arts-and-Crafts-style stained glass won't fit our Californian ranch windows, which are horizontal, not vertical. The books we flat-out don't have room for. We don't have much/any knickknack space. Our existing space is crammed with books and furniture and Stuff.
There will be helpers. I don't know what to do with my mom's double digits of houseplants, or the Swedish modern flat-woven rug from the 1970s (Ryas are collectable, flat-woven is not), or two out of the three chests of family silver. (A childless aunt, my grandmother, my mother.) There are so many things that are treasured, but won't be anybody else's treasures.
And of course I feel terrible thinking these thoughts; how selfish! But one of the things I've got to do while I'm here is start cleaning out the house.
This sorting is doubly hard, because I'm asking both what are the essential objects to Mom and which are the essential objects to me. The tall silver Japanese vase, the Swedish sewing table (mineminemine), Dad's collection of Captain Midnight decoder badges, the ruby glass vase. All of them say Mom and Dad and my childhood; they're saturated with it. Leaving aside arguments with my brother -- which I actually don't expect, we've talked about it -- I can't keep everything that reminds me of my home. My parents lived a much more elegant life than I do. The ruby glass vase isn't us; it's Mom and Dad and Great-Aunt Mary, but it's not our sort of thing. The enormous panels of Arts-and-Crafts-style stained glass won't fit our Californian ranch windows, which are horizontal, not vertical. The books we flat-out don't have room for. We don't have much/any knickknack space. Our existing space is crammed with books and furniture and Stuff.
There will be helpers. I don't know what to do with my mom's double digits of houseplants, or the Swedish modern flat-woven rug from the 1970s (Ryas are collectable, flat-woven is not), or two out of the three chests of family silver. (A childless aunt, my grandmother, my mother.) There are so many things that are treasured, but won't be anybody else's treasures.
And of course I feel terrible thinking these thoughts; how selfish! But one of the things I've got to do while I'm here is start cleaning out the house.
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