Oh my, what a weekend... M.'s grandma, as I've mentioned, is in failing health and moved to an assisted-living-type apartment about 6 months ago. This weekend we went to her house to begin the process of cleaning it out, so that it might be sold. She was there to help go through things, but, it was a difficult process, because aside from being frail and old, it was fairly agonizing for her to look at the mass accumulation of stuff from her life and make a decision about what to do with it. I can also tell you that it sure ain't fun on the other side either - to shove an object in front of an old lady and say, "Keep it? Trash it? Sell it?"
The whole thing was fairly torturous and we barely made a dent in the stuff. I'm not sure how this is going to work out.
I have a pretty bad habit of taking a relatively small problem (ie. our society doesn't have great options for our elderly) and ending up at total apocalypse (ie. we're all going to end up living in caves, illiterate cannibals). But, honestly, after that, I wanted to come home, take everything we own to a local shelter and start a self-sustaining garden in our 10x20 backyard because we're all GOING TO BE LIVING IN CAVES AND EATING OUR OWN SHOES SOON.
If anyone has some advise on how to handle the moving of grannies (emotionally or otherwise), I would be interested to hear it.
9 months ago
2 comments:
I'm very proud of you and Mike, it has to be very difficult to do what you did over the weekend....and no, I don't have any answers for you now.
Andy's mom just had to do that for her mom, but Grandma W. wasn't there when they cleaned out the house. She just told them to go for it. Only afterwards, she kind of regretted it, when she found out they threw out things she thought were valuable (which nobody actually wanted). I would say it's easier when the granny isn't there. We will probably have to do the same with Auntie's house. And, oh, it won't be fun!
Good for you guys for helping out in that difficult process. I'm sure she appreciates your help.
Post a Comment