Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Am I getting up to date with my Guilt?

November 5, 2011

I'm going through Aunt D’s stuff.  This is the stuff picked up last weekend.  I'm feeling guilt at throwing out the odd stuff that she kept and a sneaking guilt at being curious about her income and other things.  So I’ll take notes on that as I throw things out, to ease the pangs.  This isn't uncaring disposal or nosiness, it's creating family history. 

Tax records from 1981 to 1994 - tossed.  Of course I made notes on the tax records, especially the addresses she had lived at.

A good performance review from ’88 for Clerk II Orange County – tossed. 

A framed certificate of award for a suggestion for improvement of services from LA County, for which she received $40 – tossed the frame, kept the certificate.  I may toss the certificate, too after I've scanned it.

There were many copies of her request for retirement in 1986.  At first it seemed odd that there would be so many copies, but that was possibly related to the envelope I found with the list of LIES! they were telling her. 

The retirement would have been a stressful subject anyway because her views on financial decisions were very different from those of the mother and brother that she often received significant sums of money from.  I'm pretty sure that they had no idea that she was tapping into her retirement with one agency while still working at another.  So when she hit bureaucratic snags to starting it up, she couldn't complain to them about it.

While she was in the hospital and nursing facility, I had discovered that she had saved every bill and semi-official piece of mail she had ever paid or received.  They were arranged chronologically in her drawers.  When I arranged for hospice in her home, I cleared out quite a bit of it.  What I'm going through now had been stored away in boxes.

She saved grades from Harbor Jr College, between 1959 and 1964.  Mom spoke of them being in the same nursing program, but I don’t see any nursing.  Maybe she only saved the A's and B's.  She also took an Office Serv&DP class from Orange Coast College in 1981 (A).