It's Just Stuff
Once again I am in Savannah to visit my parents and try to help clean out the old house. Mom thinks it will be cleaned out and ready to be placed on the market in just a few months. Unfortunately, that is not the case. No where near reality!
Mom is having trouble "letting go" of her possessions. And she has a LOT of them. There are some items my sisters and I are interested in having for one reason or another. But the vast majority of things in this house are just stuff Mom has accumulated over the past 45 years; in other words most of it holds no sentimental value to us at all.
The problem arises when we go to the house Mom must be there. She is afraid, and rightly so, that my sisters and I will throw away something she does not want thrown away. So, we attempt to clean out by boxing up and bagging and she comes along behind us and takes out. She will ask if you want a particular item occasionally. Sometimes you can ask if you can take something that you actually want. You never know what she is going to respond. It will either be "Yes, but not now," "I have a place for that," "I'm going to use that next week when I have company over," or the very rare "You want that, take it, get it out of here." There is no rhyme or reason to anything. Needless to say, it can be very challenging and even frustrating.
I know this is Mom's stuff and I sometimes feel like a scavenger. But this house has got to be cleaned out and at this pace it is going to take years. I really think Mom is just having a difficult time acknowledging the change in their life, that they are getting older and basically just not wanting to face the end of life. I do like being able to go through my parents things while they are here to tell me the significance of something, or to experience a long forgotten memory. Many items I have put my hands on and a flood of childhood memories fill my mind. I also love being able to share some of these memories with my children (not all of them are able to be with me doing this, but usually one or two of them are around).
This is going to be a long process that is going to require an extreme amount of patience on the part of my sisters and myself. I'm not exactly sure what it is going to take to get Mom to the point where we can just go in and clean out and take away without her having a purpose to use every little thing. All she is really doing is moving stuff from one place (the old house) to another place (the new very already cluttered house).
So, as we continue to walk this road my prayer is that we do it patiently and respectfully. These are our parents and we are not going to have them with us forever. Let us try to help them through this time of adjustment and keep our frustrations to ourselves. Yes, it makes no sense to us why she wants that particular item, but it is her stuff after all. And it is just stuff; having Mom and Dad around and being able to share time with them (while they still know who we are) for as long as possible is far more important than all this STUFF.
Mom is having trouble "letting go" of her possessions. And she has a LOT of them. There are some items my sisters and I are interested in having for one reason or another. But the vast majority of things in this house are just stuff Mom has accumulated over the past 45 years; in other words most of it holds no sentimental value to us at all.
The problem arises when we go to the house Mom must be there. She is afraid, and rightly so, that my sisters and I will throw away something she does not want thrown away. So, we attempt to clean out by boxing up and bagging and she comes along behind us and takes out. She will ask if you want a particular item occasionally. Sometimes you can ask if you can take something that you actually want. You never know what she is going to respond. It will either be "Yes, but not now," "I have a place for that," "I'm going to use that next week when I have company over," or the very rare "You want that, take it, get it out of here." There is no rhyme or reason to anything. Needless to say, it can be very challenging and even frustrating.
I know this is Mom's stuff and I sometimes feel like a scavenger. But this house has got to be cleaned out and at this pace it is going to take years. I really think Mom is just having a difficult time acknowledging the change in their life, that they are getting older and basically just not wanting to face the end of life. I do like being able to go through my parents things while they are here to tell me the significance of something, or to experience a long forgotten memory. Many items I have put my hands on and a flood of childhood memories fill my mind. I also love being able to share some of these memories with my children (not all of them are able to be with me doing this, but usually one or two of them are around).
This is going to be a long process that is going to require an extreme amount of patience on the part of my sisters and myself. I'm not exactly sure what it is going to take to get Mom to the point where we can just go in and clean out and take away without her having a purpose to use every little thing. All she is really doing is moving stuff from one place (the old house) to another place (the new very already cluttered house).
So, as we continue to walk this road my prayer is that we do it patiently and respectfully. These are our parents and we are not going to have them with us forever. Let us try to help them through this time of adjustment and keep our frustrations to ourselves. Yes, it makes no sense to us why she wants that particular item, but it is her stuff after all. And it is just stuff; having Mom and Dad around and being able to share time with them (while they still know who we are) for as long as possible is far more important than all this STUFF.
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