Necklace

Packing up....

Since Alma moved in with us last August, we have been faced with the daunting question of what to do with her home and everything in it. Right after she broke her arm and we realized that she really had no business living alone, we went in and packed up all of her photographs, movies, books and other items that were important to her and brought them over here. We set up a bedroom for her and placed some of her significant "favorite things" in there. She had a couple of other pieces that Keith said had been around for as long as he could remember so we incorporated those along with some of her framed photographs into our home. Our hope was that this would help her feel that our home is now her home too.

It is now nine months later and we hadn't really addressed what to do next. We managed to get most things packed up so we could have the interior painted yet the question loomed, "what are we supposed to do with all of this stuff?". We live in a modest ranch style home and have managed to fill it with our own eclectic collection of junk over the years. There really didn't feel like there was room for more. The good thing is that Alma has always been a very practical person and the only things she collected was movies, photographs and books so once we got those things over to our house, there really wasn't much left; at least that's what we thought.

Once Alma began daycare, I began cleaning out her home. It is such a weird feeling going through someone else’s life. Because this has occurred over a long period of time, I was able to uncover many layers to Alma’s existence. It’s like reading someone’s diary and felt very invasive yet there really was no choice but to keep going. In the beginning, we were simply throwing away expired food (there was so much of that). Our perception of Alma living simply and clutter free was somewhat shattered as we uncovered years of junk mail stuffed into various items from her bookshelves to food boxes in the pantry to every piece of luggage and clothing she owned. She had massive piles of clothes stuffed in closets and dressers. Dirty clothes mixed in with clean clothes and wads of tissue among all of it. I found what I think was once a cake, fuzzy and green inside of a container on top of her refrigerator. It was at this moment that we realized that Alma had been left alone for way too long.

Once we moved Alma’s most important belongings over to our house and we realized that there was really no use or value too much of what was left, we began the task of donating the rest to the Goodwill. I did allow my adult daughter, who was displaced by her grandmother and now living on her own, to get whatever items she needed to set up her first home. She and her roommate got a very old and worn out couch (that Alma asked to get back one day when she was at Kaiya’s house-Kaiya being the sweet and sensitive girl that she is said, “Of course you can have it back, Granny”), a dining room table and chairs circa 1982 complete with white shellacked trim, a bookshelf (our daughter inherited her grandmother’s love of books) and a few other odds and ends. Then Keith discovered that a necklace he made his mom several years ago was missing and stated he needed to go through each piece of clothing before we proceed further. Thank goodness he found that piece eventually and I was able to move on. I felt overwhelmed as I made my weekly visit to the slowly diminishing pile to take car load after car load to the Goodwill (one of my favorite organizations-they do so much for our community).

Finally, one of my best friends came to the rescue and we were able to finish this almost year long task. Nancy, “the tornado”, would be leaving town for the summer in a few days and being the straight forward person that she is decided it was time to make me quit my whining and just do it. As we neared the end we discovered more pictures, articles, and surprisingly journals/diaries that she had kept. While it was extremely sad getting down to these final layers, it was also beautiful to discover what was underneath it all; a woman who cared deeply about so many people in her life but struggled with how to show them.

Note: One thing that is hard here and I don’t want to minimize is that we had to make a lot of decisions on behalf of Alma. We saved many things from her children, grandchildren, brothers, nieces and nephews. We will make sure that they get back to those family members to the best of our ability.