Letting Go
The home where I grew up and knew for over 30 plus years is going. Its being taken because my father has decided to let it go. Its a bittersweet time now because while I will miss it in so many ways and feel like yet another link to my deceased mother is gone, I also feel like when its not ours to visit any longer we all may feel free of the pain.
When we found Mom in the passenger seat of her SUV barely holding onto life that cold day in February in 2008 I recall taking her purse inside and putting it on the table. After all, I thought I would be coming back in the next few hours on Mom's request to get it along with some of her personal items so that her stay at the hospital would be more comfortable. This had happened enough times before--the first time when my Mother was 47 and suffered her first heart attack--so I'd almost come to terms with what the next steps would be after calling an ambulance or bringing her ourself to the E.R. Little did I know as I locked the door to my childhood home that it would be the last time I'd see and be in it as the home where my Mom and Dad had lived together. That night after we arrived at the hospital I was given the news by her ER doctor that she was gone. This news was even harder to understand and swallow since the EMTs had just told me that they had gotten her heartbeat back and it was strong and that they expected her to be just fine. So here we all sat in a family room waiting for news from the doctor-things like how she would be admitted and that it might be a week-long stay...Warnings that she would need to quit smoking and eat better or the next time we wouldn't be so lucky. But instead the doctor was standing there hardly even inside the door way telling us that Mom was dead. There would not be a next time.
After that it was very difficult to go to my family home. But I did just to see the place where Mom had been just hours before...To take in where she had placed this and left that...It gave me a mixture of hope and loss all at once...On the back of the chair was Mom's purple sweater. On the table was a list of groceries she would have picked up that night possibly...In the sink strainer was her coffee cup and spoon washed after her morning coffee... I took in every detail of her life as I felt the absence of her like a big hole in my heart....and in the world itself.
Dad moved out and my sister moved in. She tried to help him by finding antiques buyers, etc. I couldn't be of much help myself because I wasn't able to leave my house. The idea of dealing with putting away and selling pieces of my old life was,at least, debilitating to even imagine. That was ever more difficult...to see things become moved, thrown away or sold...It was like losing her all over again. I didn't really want to take things because it was like little by little I was killing her memory too. But life goes on and people have their own way of dealing with such loss.Eventually I did take a few things that reminded me of her...Lists she had written, a few gifts I had bought her. Mostly the things I wanted were the very things she wore,touched or smelled like her.
Dad has moved on-as he should- and remarried. He and his wife live in their own place and he has let the bank take the house. Its been over 3 years since he decided to stop paying the small mortgage and yet they only recently decided to take ownership of it. Our neighbors took everything they thought was of any importance from the house when they saw the bank start leaving notices on the house. From what I've been told by my sister the things are in the neighbors back yard awaiting our okay for them to sell it all. The neighbors, who have been our friends for at least half the time we lived there, wanted to save everything from becoming the banks property. It was very sweet of them. So please understand that the next line is said out of an emotional place that has nothing to do at all with their thoughtfulness.....To be honest I wish in away they had just left it in the house. Its too difficult to go through all the items again-to decide what is too important to sell, where we will put this item or what we will sell that item for. To me everything in that house is too valuable to sell. In away, oddly enough, I'd rather the bank just take it all at once and do what they want with it. Because to try to put it all in terms of what to do with such huge and painful memories is too much. Dad walked away from it all because he was wise enough to know that he couldn't fit it into his new life either emotionally or phyically. I don't have the space or the money to store any of it. On top of that I don't feel like after Dad we have any right to it...We took what we had a "stake" in...
Then today my sister dropped off a watch I had given Mom many years ago. It was very thoughtful of her...The watch has a black leather watch band, a rectangular face with my kids' names written across it with two cute stick figures who portray her Grandchildren holding hands. The second I picked it up I put it to my nose to smell it and sure enough there it was, Mom's sweet and sultry smell. I immediately started to weep. I can't keep doing this---I can't keep finding pieces of my Mom from that house all over the place being given to me by our neighbors or my sister or whoever. But these words are not coming out right. Its not that I am not very appreciative of people who are honestly just trying to help. But it needs to be over...Especially for Dad's sake. He can't talk about mom without crying. That house and everything in it (save for some gifts we gave them, etc) is Dad's to leave behind. Everytime we go in and "save" stuff its like we are going against his wishes. Sometimes I wish I could live there and other times I wish it would burn down... I don't know what the mortgage company will do with it. Forget that my parents paid for that house for over 35 years and that whatever was left of the mortgage was probably very little, the rule is you don't pay you lose the house. No disrespect to the people who are truly just trying to help. I realize that it may sound that way but we all have our way of dealing with loss. I don't begrudge anyone their way or right...Its just been a long 3 years and Dad had to make a very difficult decision. He should have the right to be able to see his wishes through. So why is it still there for people to go into? God, please, help us all let it go...
When we found Mom in the passenger seat of her SUV barely holding onto life that cold day in February in 2008 I recall taking her purse inside and putting it on the table. After all, I thought I would be coming back in the next few hours on Mom's request to get it along with some of her personal items so that her stay at the hospital would be more comfortable. This had happened enough times before--the first time when my Mother was 47 and suffered her first heart attack--so I'd almost come to terms with what the next steps would be after calling an ambulance or bringing her ourself to the E.R. Little did I know as I locked the door to my childhood home that it would be the last time I'd see and be in it as the home where my Mom and Dad had lived together. That night after we arrived at the hospital I was given the news by her ER doctor that she was gone. This news was even harder to understand and swallow since the EMTs had just told me that they had gotten her heartbeat back and it was strong and that they expected her to be just fine. So here we all sat in a family room waiting for news from the doctor-things like how she would be admitted and that it might be a week-long stay...Warnings that she would need to quit smoking and eat better or the next time we wouldn't be so lucky. But instead the doctor was standing there hardly even inside the door way telling us that Mom was dead. There would not be a next time.
After that it was very difficult to go to my family home. But I did just to see the place where Mom had been just hours before...To take in where she had placed this and left that...It gave me a mixture of hope and loss all at once...On the back of the chair was Mom's purple sweater. On the table was a list of groceries she would have picked up that night possibly...In the sink strainer was her coffee cup and spoon washed after her morning coffee... I took in every detail of her life as I felt the absence of her like a big hole in my heart....and in the world itself.
Dad moved out and my sister moved in. She tried to help him by finding antiques buyers, etc. I couldn't be of much help myself because I wasn't able to leave my house. The idea of dealing with putting away and selling pieces of my old life was,at least, debilitating to even imagine. That was ever more difficult...to see things become moved, thrown away or sold...It was like losing her all over again. I didn't really want to take things because it was like little by little I was killing her memory too. But life goes on and people have their own way of dealing with such loss.Eventually I did take a few things that reminded me of her...Lists she had written, a few gifts I had bought her. Mostly the things I wanted were the very things she wore,touched or smelled like her.
Dad has moved on-as he should- and remarried. He and his wife live in their own place and he has let the bank take the house. Its been over 3 years since he decided to stop paying the small mortgage and yet they only recently decided to take ownership of it. Our neighbors took everything they thought was of any importance from the house when they saw the bank start leaving notices on the house. From what I've been told by my sister the things are in the neighbors back yard awaiting our okay for them to sell it all. The neighbors, who have been our friends for at least half the time we lived there, wanted to save everything from becoming the banks property. It was very sweet of them. So please understand that the next line is said out of an emotional place that has nothing to do at all with their thoughtfulness.....To be honest I wish in away they had just left it in the house. Its too difficult to go through all the items again-to decide what is too important to sell, where we will put this item or what we will sell that item for. To me everything in that house is too valuable to sell. In away, oddly enough, I'd rather the bank just take it all at once and do what they want with it. Because to try to put it all in terms of what to do with such huge and painful memories is too much. Dad walked away from it all because he was wise enough to know that he couldn't fit it into his new life either emotionally or phyically. I don't have the space or the money to store any of it. On top of that I don't feel like after Dad we have any right to it...We took what we had a "stake" in...
Then today my sister dropped off a watch I had given Mom many years ago. It was very thoughtful of her...The watch has a black leather watch band, a rectangular face with my kids' names written across it with two cute stick figures who portray her Grandchildren holding hands. The second I picked it up I put it to my nose to smell it and sure enough there it was, Mom's sweet and sultry smell. I immediately started to weep. I can't keep doing this---I can't keep finding pieces of my Mom from that house all over the place being given to me by our neighbors or my sister or whoever. But these words are not coming out right. Its not that I am not very appreciative of people who are honestly just trying to help. But it needs to be over...Especially for Dad's sake. He can't talk about mom without crying. That house and everything in it (save for some gifts we gave them, etc) is Dad's to leave behind. Everytime we go in and "save" stuff its like we are going against his wishes. Sometimes I wish I could live there and other times I wish it would burn down... I don't know what the mortgage company will do with it. Forget that my parents paid for that house for over 35 years and that whatever was left of the mortgage was probably very little, the rule is you don't pay you lose the house. No disrespect to the people who are truly just trying to help. I realize that it may sound that way but we all have our way of dealing with loss. I don't begrudge anyone their way or right...Its just been a long 3 years and Dad had to make a very difficult decision. He should have the right to be able to see his wishes through. So why is it still there for people to go into? God, please, help us all let it go...
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