10 months…
I’ve finally started going through all the stuff I saved from my mother’s house before I sold it. I packed a box of things I intended to go through at one point to see if they were keepers or tossers. Up until now, I haven’t had the emotional fortitude to sort through it all.
Today, 10 months on, I figured it was time.
I already went through all the photographs last month. The box now is mostly filled with a few books she and my stepfather had accumulated throughout the years and some odds and ends.
What I typically call junk.
There was an ancient health and diseases book they must have picked up at a garage or tag sale. The copyright page is missing but the book looks old enough to have been printed in maybe the 60s or 70s. Several afflictions were outlined in yellow marker. Prostate disease; low magnesium; shaking legs syndrome; digestive issues; lower flank pain. I could tell, just from these, it was my stepfather who used this book as a health bible.
I’ve mentioned this previously, but my mother hadn’t seen a doctor in almost 50 years before she broke her first hip. She wasn’t hypochondriacal like my stepfather was. Is.
Another book was one I’d given them several years ago about cats. It was mainly a picture book. This one I know was my mother’s. The woman adored cats. If they’d been able to care for a pet, I’m sure they would have had a few. As it was, they could barely care for themselves.
I moved on to the pictures after making a book toss and donate pile. The health book went in the toss one. No surprise, there.
My mother’s living room wall had been awash in photographs of me, my daughter, and my grandson. I told you last month about the scotch tape issues. I’m still shuddering at all the tape I had to remove. So many pictures had to be trashed because they were damaged from the tape.
My mother was – if not a full one-blown one, then a mild– hoarder. Mostly, it was tchotchkes that had no intrinsic value, items she found at the Senior Center for twenty-five cents or at a garage sale for a dime.
She always said to me when she got something new, “This is worth so much more than I paid for it. Look it up. You’ll see.”
I had no idea where I was supposed to look up the value of a coffee mug of Garfield the cat with a visible chip in the handle.
Or where I could find the resale value of a postcard of the Statue of Liberty someone had put into a plastic frame from the Dollar Store.
And just why did she think a ceramic dinner plate with the slogan Don’t Worry, Be Happy and a smiley face was worth anything of monetary substance?
It finally dawned on me the value of everything she’d bought had worth to her and that was how she – in her mind – justified it.
She loved cats and when I was growing up we had several, including a red ginger cat named Buff. Hence, the Garfield mug.
Her parents came over at a time when they had to pass through Ellis Island and stop at the Statue of Liberty to legally enter the country. Hence, the framed postcard.
Despite her horrible life, she always had upbeat expectations and loved to smile. Hence…well, you get it.
I wish that at the time I was so concerned about all these THINGS junking up her small trailer and which I told her were doing so, I could have had the insight I do now to her motivations.
She’d lost so much in life – her father at a young age, one sister to suicide, her first marriage, a baby in utero; multiple jobs and financial setbacks; and the legitimate practice of the faith she adored. It was no wonder she attached value to worthless (in my eyes) items.
In hers, they were priceless.
