Planning Ahead

I haven't really gotten back into the swing of blogging since my vacation.  This is something that I made while vacating.  It was done with Comic Life, an ipod ap. 

 

 

 

Unpacking Grandma

If the pile of Christmas stuff didn't look like enough to make a full van load, this is the reason why. Along with bins and boxes of Christmas stuff, Aunt D was storing Grandma L's "paperwork".

While Aunt D had saved, among other things, the bible that her ex-husband had given to his Grandmother in 1965 and every bill she had ever paid, still in the envelope with all inserts; Grandma L had saved every piece of paper that anyone had ever sent her and then some.

The years of Aunt D's back bills and banks statements I dealt with before she was released from the hospital to hospice care. They had been neatly arranged in rows in her dresser drawers. A few things were in boxes in closets. I didn't throw away anything that was needed. Once a utility has acknowledged your payment on the next bill, I don't see any point in keeping back copies.

The bundles on the top are letters, cards, and postcards.  Underneath are diaries.  Some of the entries were in handwriting that was perhaps 3 points tall.  (Check that out with your computer font.) 

The diaries scare me a little.

I'll share an email that I sent to my sister while my desk was looking like the top picture. Can't see my keyboard? Well, I did have to move that maroon box to reach it. Or the burgundy box if it's necessary to be picky. (Skin Horse is a cool webcomic, but it's best to start at the beginning. Immerse yourself in the archives.)

So many ways to start this email . . .

1 - I have strange relatives all over my desk . . . and under it.

2 - The urge to light a match has been mollified by finding a clipping of The Mob. (No, there will be no explanation.)

3 - OMG she never threw any piece of paper out.

Aunt D was a pale echo of the original. Although I didn't find any bills beside the 1939 water bills and doctor bills. Either she didn't keep those or she only kept things that were evidence (they were from when she was married to Woody, if that's pertinent) or Aunt D tossed the rest of the bills. My recycling bin is grateful, whatever spared it.

As it is, every diary and photo album is filled with random clippings and bits and pieces. I can't just toss them because maybe one in six is related to a relative. The rest are poems, advice columns, editorial essays, etc. (Etc. includes a clipping of the birth of a 16lb 4oz girl at General Hospital by caesarian section, with speculation that it may be a record.) ((It also includes a little notebook with hand-written risqué jokes from someone named Ted Storm.))

I am evil because I threw out all of the negatives. I blame new technology. I collected the pictures and threw out a couple of those sticky page albums - minus the sticky. I am evil because I'm going to throw out the disintegrating "family" bible after I'm sure I got the information out of it. It was started by Grandma L some time after she married Woody, so it probably doesn't have anything I haven't already logged.

I am evil because I keep saying "Who are these people?" instead of thinking of it as a treasure hunt. She did label some of the older pictures and the newer ones that came pre-inserted into album pages. But some of the old ones were kicked around a bit, then glued into one of those old black paper albums, then ripped off and put into a sticky page album. So the writing is often half covered with adhered black paper splotches.

I'm evil because I keep thinking "Why did you people write to each other in pencil so often?" Smudgy handwriting on darkened paper is not fun to read. Saving letters may have been a generational thing. She not only has the letters her kids sent her when they were away, she has her letters to them. That means they brought them back to her. Or maybe they were just trained.

I’m also evil because I’m only going to keep so many pictures of Cousin R. For some of them I had a set and then I inherited Aunt Linda’s and now I have Grandma’s too. I like R and all, but I have to assume that he and Uncle L have copies of these, too.

Found another copy of the RCH will, with his step sister listed has having tenancy of the Sunland house for her lifetime and then it going back to JH (Grandma's first husband and RCH's son). Also some correspondence, which petered out about the time that a lawyer said that they'd need to have the wife that was married to JH when he died petition for it. And that it had to be done before someone legally bought it. (Which may or may not have been true. The lawyers weren't estate lawyers, they were helping Grandma out for free because they knew her.)

I think that's were the adventure of The House That Was Meant To Be Ours ended. Aunt Linda never mentioned the surviving wife bit (it would have been his third one), and may not have known. She certainly latched onto the story. It was one of the big tragedies of her life and proof that she could never catch a break. She was determined that it would never happen again. Not determined enough to, you know, make a will, but determined enough to give me marching orders. See previous post.

Well, I'm going to be more evil and try to identify enough letters as tossable to make the rest fit into one bin and one box for stuff to keep. Did S take up the harmonica? Because it looks like I have Grandma's now. Also an embossing stamp with her name and address. And diaries. I mentioned that the diaries scare me, and not just because I found another set of cheesecake photos . . . taken outside.

I'd better get back to it. May your desk be emptier than mine.

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.]