More Old (2010) Guilt - 1/24/10

(Just in case I didn't make it clear at the beginning, this is from an old log I kept of things that I was guilty about. It was meant, among other things, to list things that I was throwing out that I felt guilty about not keeping. The idea was that memorializing them was giving them enough respect that I didn't need to actually keep them any more.)

 

It’s been awhile since I wrote here. I feel guilty about that, of course. I’m about to throw out some more stuff. One is something I’d kind of like to keep, but it’s torn. So I’ll just describe it. It’s a dozen or so cardboard strips held together with a metal gasket at the top. They can rotate around the gasket. 

 

The front strip is thicker cardboard and printed with the Foremost logo. It used to be longest, as well as the thickest, but that part has ripped off. The thinner strips say things like SL 1 quart So-Lo extra and O 1 quart Orange Juice extra. It was a little ordering device from back when milk was delivered to the doorstep by milk men in milk trucks. You’d flip out your change in order and leave it in the mouth of one of the quart milk bottles that you had set out for return. There were also a couple of leave 2 strips and a No Service strip. 

It’s a cute little device. If you gave it to someone under forty and asked them what it was, they would likely have no idea. But it’s torn. It’s going out. Soon it will only exist here and if this document is lost, it’s gone. I feel a little guilty for not taking good enough care of it. If it hadn't been torn, I could have sold it on ebay.

 

Also, I picked up a few bookends from Grandma L’s house after she died. They were plaster, bought from a hobby shop and meant to be painted to suit one’s preferences. She had painted two and left one or more undone. I say or more, because I vaguely remember breaking one at one point. But they’re heavy and hard to dust. I personally get along better with bookshelves and thin metal bookends. So they’re going. They’ve been in my closet for more than a year.

 

Another thing going is an old globe. Too many borders have moved for it to be useful. And, like encyclopedias, it’s been supplanted by the internet. A few years ago I threw out the World Book encyclopedias. That was painful. Mom and Dad bought those from Mrs. Kearney, my second and fourth grade teacher. That took a lot of thought and cash on their part.

 

They already had the Encyclopedia Americana. But it targeted an older audience. The World Books were to help us kids with school reports. And they did. Still, ditching them felt like facing down my parents with: "You thought you were making a big family investment but you were wrong." (In late 2011, I'm not feeling that so much. That's a good thing to have let go of.)

More Old (2009) Guilt

12/31/09

I’m going to watch balancing point next. It’s a series of artistic rock-stacking vignettes in scenic mountain areas . . . played in reverse. Aw. The audio has been disabled because the video producer didn’t get authorization from WMG. Whoever that is. That's a pity because the effect was greatly enhanced by the music.

So I’ll turn on some Manheim Steamroller on iTunes. It’s nicely seasonal. I’m starting with Catching Snowflakes On Your Tongue. Segue into Masters In This Hall. There’s no authorization from the Steamroller listed in the YouTube part of that link, so I don't know how long it will stay up. The Amazon link might make up for it. Go Steamroller.

Aunt Dolores used to have flowers sent to Grandma L’s grave for her birthday and Mother’s Day. Possibly other days as well. I haven’t even sent flowers to Aunt D’s grave. She did some work setting me up to be her heir and caretaker. Not to the point of writing a will or visiting or anything. But when I visited at Christmas, she’d talk about me having her house because I was the one that needed it and the one that she depended on.

I wasn’t staying in touch because I thought there’d be a payoff. She had married for one thing. He was six years older than her and disabled. I'm sure she had assumed that he'd predecease her, but by August it was becoming obvious that he would probably wouldn't. So even if she'd written a will, there was no way I’d get the house, or want to. Not with a surviving spouse.

From September to December, I drove or bussed up to Redding to look after her and make arrangements. No one else from the family could make it up there, for various reasons. Uncle L, her brother, for instance, was in LA having a serious hernia operation, complicated by some possible heart trouble.

He came by when he could, and he gave me travel money, which made things easier. Nearly everyone else was out of state, with families and jobs and illnesses of their own.
Aunt D’s husband couldn’t make decisions about her illness and treatment. He was very hard of hearing and had been used to Aunt D taking care of him.

Neighbors tended to him while I did phoning and paperwork. Spouse was a veteran, so Aunt D qualified for burial in a veteran’s plot. So Grandma L is buried in Palos Verdes and Aunt D was cremated and buried in Redding. She had been hoping to be buried in the cemetery by the river, but Spouse didn’t really want to spend the money, and I don’t blame him, all things considered. He's going to need every bit of it for the next few years. The veteran’s plot is where he will go, too, unless his son has other ideas, later.

Aunt D really hated the idea of Spouse’s son getting the house. She instructed me to tell him that I was supposed to get it. But I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole. Not with anyone, and definitely not with a half-deaf man in a wheelchair. One who will need all the money in the house equity to get through the rest of his own life.

I’ll tell you sometime about her reasons for fixating on bequeathing the house. It will include old family stories about the wrong person getting the house, the property, the estate. Right now it’s New Year’s Eve. I’m going to watch balancing point again. It’s soothing. And I’m going to throw away a few more things on my desk.

[I've found out since then that there was probably some guilt to her urge to keep the house in the family. The down payment for the house had come from a house she sold that her mother had given to her. And her brother had been semi-supporting them, kicking in a few thousand here and there for taxes, for furniture, for the down payment on a car. So it had to feel like she had siphoned her family resources into Spouses family.

Still. Wills, people. If you want to leave someone something, write a bloody will. Don't imply that it's someone's family duty to fight for something that they're not legally entitled to, especially when you've set them up to be out of the legal loop.]