Yesterday I went over to my mother’s house and cleaned out the large buffet in her living room. I said I wasn’t going to help my mother clean her house, but I made an exception for the buffet, because it belonged to my grandparents (Dan and I moved it and several other pieces of nice, pricey furniture out of my grandparents’ house two years ago, when the court first assigned my grandfather a legal guardian), and housed over twenty years worth of stuff. I don’t blame her for dreading the task of weeding through tangible memories, so I volunteered to do it. It took less than two hours to go through every drawer, and in the end I had filled three boxes with items to discard, and one box with items to keep.
I didn’t cry, like I thought I would, but then again most of the stuff in there was trivial, meaningless things, like pharmacy receipts, empty film canisters and McDonald’s coupons that expired in 2004. But there were little odds and ends here and there that got to me. A handmade card I gave to my grandfather for his 61st birthday; the hospital bill from the 1960s, when my grandmother gave birth to another daughter, a little girl named Jeanie who died from prematurity complications; a get well card whose envelope my mom had carefully printed “MOMMY” on around that time; my grandmother’s watch; a bag of bus tokens my grandfather never used.
Anyway. The buffet is now cleaned out, so she’ll have plenty of storage space for other things.
And I’m wrapping up this blog entry right about now, because I have a quick errand to run!
You are so lucky to have had that opportunity. I’d kill to be able to do that for my grandmother, I can see her buffet sitting there with tons of things just like that on it in my mind. Unfortunately that will never happen! I envy you once again.
wow. i can’t imagine doing that. i will probably end up helping do that at least once in my life.
Aw hun it’s gotta be hard