Sorting through a life lived
- Dec 10, 2015
- 3 min read
Angela is boldly sharing her version of #messyperfectlife as part of a blog series on this dualing topic. I am so honored that she would warmly share this story and perspective with all of us.
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A few years ago, my (then) 93 year mother-in-law needed to move to a place where she could have constant care and assistance. In that we live in Iowa, and she’d lived in Oklahoma her entire life, we knew what we had to do.
In the brutal heat of late June we spent untold hours sorting, throwing out and selling the massive amounts of stuff in a house without air conditioning. I remember feelings of disgust when cleaning out corroded food and moldy clothes only to find myself in tears as I found and read letters she had written to my father-in-law’s company, begging them to pay her the pension he had worked for (and had died two months before he met the payout requirement).
We found ledgers of the monthly budget, amounts to companies written in ink, only to be scratched out, as she was clearly struggling to find a way to make ends meet. After we broke the lock to a cedar chest in her bedroom– we found not one, but two divorce decrees stored in a decorative tin at the very bottom. Her first marriage was at age 15, annulled only a year later.
It is hard to describe the enormous sense of responsibility that suddenly came over me- I felt as if I were exploring the deepest realms of someone’s soul and intimate thoughts.
My husband had no idea his stepmom had been married before his dad – let alone that she’d been married twice. He found the baby book his mother (who died of leukemia when he was four) had put together for him in that trunk. It is difficult to describe watching a grown man weep over infant pictures of himself he had never seen – knowing that his mom, who he doesn’t remember – had cherished her precious baby boy and had done what most mothers do and kept so many of his early life mementoes.
After we had returned from the trip, I found myself not only reeling from various emotions but also reflecting on other aspects this experience provided. At the point in which you cannot sort through your own property – who will? What will be tossed, what will be saved, given, or taken away? What parts of yourself do you want to expose to whomever is doing the cleaning? There was so much of her, her husband, her mother, her brother, her stepson left in that house. And in a week, it was all gone.
A couple of years later my husband went to work on a lovely fall day and came home the same night without a job. In a day we lost 65% of our income. The next year was fraught with the psychological element of what had happened as well as trying to negotiate our financial situation and restore some semblance of normalcy to our lives.
I don’t wish what happened to us on anyone.
But this major life event – coupled with the one with my mother-in-law – really helped me to get a very clear perspective on what are my priorities and what I value: experiences, not stuff.
People, not things.
Memories and nostalgia have their place, and I am sure when I get moved out of my house, whoever is cleaning up behind me might find an old wine bottle from our first trip to Italy, the baby bracelet my mom tied to my wrist with a ribbon, letters from my deceased grandmothers and aunts, pictures of me and my best girlfriends, my dog Bob’s collar, thank you notes written in two and three-year-old scribble from my nieces, nephews, and stepkids, and small costume jewelry pieces my husband purchased for me every trip we took together.
I hope what they can infer before they toss it all in a large hefty trash bag -is how much I loved, and how beloved I felt.
--Angela
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