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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
MEMENTOS OF TWO LIVES 2009-08-25 It's been two and a half months since my parents died, and I have spent much of that time handling their estate and figuring out what to do with all of their possessions. In most cases, children lose one parent before they lose the second one and the possessions of the first to die can be slowly packaged up, with some things given to relatives as treasured mementos, other things sold, and still others given to charity. Then, when the second parent dies, there is less to do. Because my parents died four days apart, I must package up all of their possessions, close up their house and finalize the distribution of their estate all at the same time. And as an only child, just as I cared for them with no help from family, I am handling this task mostly alone. It has been exhausting and it is still not finished. I have, however, had a lot of comments from onlookers. Neighbors of my parents come over when I am packing and tell me how sorry they feel for me, having to do all of this alone. No one has offered to help, however. Several of them have told me stories of friends whose children ordered dumpsters and just threw all their parents' possessions away. I don't know if they are offering this information as a suggestion, or just as a comment on how much they admire my unwillingness to do that. My parents, like most octogenarians, had a lifetime of possessions they no longer needed or used, but couldn't part with. I have to say that while the task has been onerous, the part I have actually enjoyed is coming across things I hadn't seen in decades, and in many cases had even forgotten about. I wouldn't trade that for the time saved by throwing things away in a dumpster. For instance, I found all my dad's army medals. I don't recall ever seeing them before. I found letters from my mother's two sisters to her, and a letter my mother had written to me. I'm glad they didn't end up in a dumpster. I found a newspaper article regarding the death of my grandfather, who died in a train accident when my mother was three or four years old. And I found an ancient cookbook that belonged to my grandmother. I found a framed picture of my mother's relatives from around 1910, and tucked behind the picture was a note addressed to me from my mother, a diagram of the picture with names of each relative so I would know who they were. I found pictures, and letters, and awards and calendars and a diary in which my mother described every Christmas since her marriage to my dad. I found a fiftieth anniversary card from my father to my mother. I found items that had belonged to my maternal grandmother and to my aunts and uncles, things that my mother had kept as the last surviving family member. I found a medal that my mother thought she had lost. When she first became ill she started wearing this medal, engraved with the likeness of the late Pope John Paul. Because the pope had Parkinson's Disease, and we thought my dad had the same disease (though the diagnosis was revised some months later), my mother started praying to the late pope, thinking he might answer her prayers to stay alive while my dad still needed care. Sometime last summer, she misplaced the medal, but while sorting through her things, I found it. I found a few remaining pieces of their wedding crystal, most having broken over the years, and my grandmother's casserole dish, in her wedding china pattern. I found many things that had belonged to my brother. When he died at the age of 20, my parents put some of his things in a blue trunk they kept in the garage. When my husband got it down off the cabinet, we found, among other things, Cuban cigar boxes full of marbles. We also found forty year old paper plates with crude drawings of birds on them. I couldn't believe it. Forty one years ago, when my brother was ill, my mother had wanted "bird dishes" for Christmas. My mother has always collected items with birds on them, and now she wanted dishes decorated with a bird motif. My brother and I thought it would be funny to buy some paper plates and draw pictures of birds on them. So we drew silly drawings of different birds, and on the back I wrote "Noritake china? Made in Terry's room." Imagine, my mother keeping paper plates for forty one years! Of course, in addition to all the wonderful mementos I stumbled across, there was a lot of what I called "junk," though the caregiver who was with my parents when they died and who helped me with some of the packing called it "fancy junk" because much of it did have some monetary value. There were many collectibles, multiple sets of dishes, souvenirs from their travels, and countless ceramic birds and pictures of birds, all things I neither needed nor had room for. I have kept a few things that meant the most to mom and dad, but the rest I gave away or sold at a recent garage sale. Just yesterday I took my dad's golf trophies and threw them away. They meant a lot to him, I am sure, as he loved golf, but what am I to do with them? I realized as I sorted through everything that the more I keep, the more my children will have to go through and agonize over (or just throw in a dumpster) when I am gone. As I have been doing all this packing, I have come to realize how overloaded we Americans are with possessions, many of them useless, and how we have fallen prey to the consumer culture. Do we really need all these things? Of course we don't. My mother and father were both shoppers, my father mostly for computer and golf related things, my mother for decorative items. And they rarely threw anything out, so I have found things in every corner of every drawer and closet. No one understands quite how they fit so many things in such a small house without it looking like a storage facility. But my mother's house was always immaculate. As I put things out for the garage sale I remarked to my daughter how sad it was that all of those inanimate things are still here, while grandma and grandpa are not. Their material possessions have outlived them, as material possessions always do. I will say this though: while I have felt overwhelmed by the task of sorting through their possessions and making decisions about what to keep and what to toss, I am glad I had the opportunity. Had I just thrown things in a dumpster I would not have found my mother's medal, my relatives' letters, and those bird paper plates, all of which are priceless. |