You Thought the Last Two Were Bad

I'm not sure what to call this one.  I had Christmas Has Left the Building.  I had Unpacking Grandma.  Now Youngest Son and Devoted Girlfriend are back from the far away state where my Mother's house, garage, and various sheds are finally empty.  
(Pictures below)

They returned in a van and a truck hauling a rented trailer, all three of which were filled.  My house is now very not empty.

 At one point, YS&DG had run the two nearest small towns out of large trash bags.  The nearest town that still had some stocked was 45 minutes away.  He estimates that they filled and hauled away 200 large bags of old paperwork, broken things, worn out things, and long expired food.

That's not counting the twenty bags of old paperwork and obsolete maps and advice books that went bye-bye both of the times that I went up.  And this was after she had spent maybe two years trying to sort and disburse as much as she could. 

I'll talk more about what sort of thing she couldn't or didn't get around to parting with, later.  At one point she and Dad had shoe boxes containing every cancelled check they ever wrote, and those had been sent to the great balance sheet in the sky.  So it could have been worse.

Since this is The Guilt List, I always sort of listen inside myself, straining to catch a whisper of guilt, whenever I post.  If I listen now, I perceive within myself guilt that YS spent so many weeks doing this work.  Fortunately, I feel more gratitude than guilt.  He was doing it for Mom and Dan and for the rest of the family that couldn't be there, as much as he was doing it for me.  I think it was a wonderful thing for him to do.

It's not over, yet.  I'll get to help sort and disburse or store the things that they brought back and the boxes and boxes that came back on previous trips.

It's a relief that there's not much to add to the kitchen.

The biggest pile inside.

Devoted Girlfriend is sorting.  There is an aisle, there.

Boxes and half-sorted pictures on the table.  Boxes under the table.

I'm sure that going through everything will bring up memories.  It has every other time.  It won't just be memories of Mom.  Mom sort of inherited pictures, papers, and bits & pieces from the two generations before her.  Not to mention, the collections of two husbands. 

YS&DG have been in purging mode for weeks, now, and they're determined to continue, going through their stuff and my stuff after we've purged or controlled the old relatives' stuff.  I'm going to do what I can to join them.  We've seen what it can build up to if you're not willing to be brutal and send things out of your life. 

And if I have trouble letting enough go, I'll be writing about it here.

Hoarding vs Archiving

It probably says a lot about me that the thing that finally goaded me into posting was a webcomic.  This is the first post in 2012.  My Mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March and she died of it on May 24.  I'm still not sure what to post about that.  I think I'll stick to her situation as regards the comic,

There are two things that are related.  One, from the time she started feeling bad*, she started going through all of the things she had accumulated, throwing things out, selling things at a flea market, and giving things away.  I really appreciate that.

Two, she sent two boxes of photos, a box of 8mm home movies, and a box of vinyl albums home with me in March.  She had already given me two boxes of photos, which we had gone through together and labeled, and I thought that was the last of them.  No.  There were still two large boxes under her bed filled with photos.  Some of them must have been ones she inherited when her mother, my Grandma B, died.

A fair bit of the inherited photos are not labeled.  I'm guessing that they were photos that Grandma B inherited when Grandpa B's mother died.  Grandma B was pretty good about labeling. 

Now I look at these pictures and have no clue who these people are.  One of them is on a small piece of glass, about 1.5" x 1.5", instead of on paper.  I suspect that I can identify some of them through the labeled pictures, but it's going to take awhile, and I have my Mother's estate to settle first. 

I think about the boxes of Grandma L's photos and letters that I still have to go through, and the box of Aunt D's things.  Now these.  Then I look at the webcomic and wonder if I'm archiving the family heritage or hoarding things for others to toss after I'm gone.  There's no way to know.  It will depend on whether anyone in my children's or grandchildren's generation becomes interested. 

Note to self:  Find Mom's Christmas Stocking pattern.  Learn to knit.

* the length of time it took her doctor to diagnose her is a completely different rant