My sweet neighbor Ruby appeared at my front door on a recent weekday. It was frankly nowhere near 5 o’clock anywhere in the continental U.S., but from the angst-ridden look on her face, I quickly invited her in and poured her a glass of white wine in my kitchen.
Trying to connect the dots, I glanced across the street to Ruby’s house and saw her loving kids (and they really are) carrying out box after box. Ruby, who is younger than I, had long talked about downsizing “one day,” but her grown children, I was quickly surmising, had decided that day was now, before minor mobility issues became major. Ruby was moving into her son and daughter-in-law’s house which was about 20 minutes away. She would have perhaps 1/80th of the earthly possessions she’d acquired over more than four decades. Under that roof, she had raised kids and grandkids and grieved the loss of two husbands to untimely deaths.
I listened and nodded and said the appropriate things. This must be so hard. I couldn’t admit to Ruby what I was really thinking: You are the luckiest woman I know.
Ruby’s kids were wisely pulling off the Band Aid now while she was still well enough, clear-headed enough, to help them make decisions. I envisioned her a few months down the road, able to focus on family and friends, blessedly unencumbered by the appalling amount of stuff we accumulate over our lives.
Meanwhile, I’d still be banging around my two-story house trying to remember why I needed 47 coffee mugs, four sets of silverware and two crystal bowls from my wedding – my first wedding 40 years ago – that I’ve kept because, you know, I might need them for a holiday gathering someday.
I suppose my (respectful) envy comes from a year where I’ve spent, with huge help from family members, countless hours dismantling not just one, but two homes powered by long-lived great dames. The first: My mother, who passed away last November at age 90; the second: M husband’s aunt, who died this spring at 82, leaving a rent-controlled apartment in Queens, N.Y., in which she’d lived for 50 years.
Many of us, simply by reaching the age we are, don’t need to have a picture drawn here. You’ve already faced this task, or you can see the tsunami coming. Your parent has died, and you need to clean out the house to sell it. Or your parent requires assisted living or memory care, which means the necessary decommissioning of a cherished residence of decades into a one- or two-bedroom apartment.
And I know you know that our kids and grandkids don’t want any of it, save for a cool wedding photo or vintage hat.
If you’ve begun to research how the hell this process works, you’ve likely found many reputable companies that will help you declutter: Keep! Store! Toss! Some will hold an estate sale for you. Others will come in and take everything … sort of a don’t-ask-don’t-tell situation where the word “junk” is usually in the mix.
Call me weird (and it’s trendy now!) but I could not bear to do any of the above. I needed the closure and, admittedly, the control of inventorying, deciding and doling it out. I knew that meant I was about to spend eight or 10 hours a day for weeks in the monotonous rhythm of pulling down, wrapping, packing, labeling, then taping up another box. I knew I’d need Advil at the end of the day.
What I didn’t predict was the wrenching emotional toll the process would take. And I couldn’t find anything to help me there.
So, I’m offering my thoughts here. I hope they will be comforting if you decide to – or are left to – tackle this herculean task.
To begin, I think this seemingly ordinary effort feels so big emotionally because it is. Mom or Dad is offering us the first stark reminder that life’s forward motion has made a hard stop and is shifting into reverse. After a life of building, buying, collecting, framing, winning, wearing, and upholstering, we’re faced with acknowledging how little of it matters anymore. For them now and, if we’re paying attention, for us soon enough.
And the little that does matter will pack an emotional punch of its own. If you have lost a parent who was your North Star, you might smile packing up her dusty porcelain figurines or his bottle opener collection for the donation truck. But then, there’s that silky scarf on which her perfumy scent still lingers. And the bow tie he wore to your child’s long-ago band concert. I opened my mom’s bedside table and found an ordinary letter from young adult me from 1984. That means she carried it across three addresses for nearly 40 years. This is the stuff that kills you. If you need to take time to cry, please do and don’t apologize to anybody.
Speaking of crying, this task is no easier, and I might argue it’s harder, when you’re decommissioning the home of a parent with whom you had a fraught relationship, or no relationship. Of course you feel resentful. And maybe sad, too, because the prospect of making peace is now impossible. As a writer, I would suggest that you take one – or 300 – sheets of paper and write down what you are feeling, what you wanted to say. Keep it for as long as you need to in a safe and private space. Then burn it. In times when I have done this in other confounding situations, I’ve found this simple act a wonderful way to regain power and control. Whatever you choose, I hope that the literal and metaphorical act of clearing and cleaning becomes therapeutic, freeing you to move forward.
But before I get too Zen on you, here are a few other potential pitfalls where crying, screaming (in the closet) or walking away for a day are warranted:
- Relatives and friends who don’t help but offer advice. (Thank them. Now you know what you’re NOT going to do…feel better?)
- Relatives and friends who help but they don’t do it right! (Thank them, too. And let them do it. The box won’t care.)
- Consignment shops and second-hand stores that are just plain wrong about how much your parents’ fabulous clothes/jewelry/rocks/books/LPs are worth! Don’t they know what they’re in possession of?! (At least you tried. I took my bruised ego and the whopping $150 paid to us for my mother’s extraordinary professional wardrobe and got a mani-pedi. Oops, I hope my brothers aren’t reading this.)
In the end, well, in the end there’s an end. We did empty out my mother’s beautiful home down to the final hangers and sold it. Same for my husband’s lovely aunt’s apartment. My brothers and I, and our kids, and my mom’s friends, took a few things that spoke to us: Photos, four crystal port glasses from a larger set, unique clothing, art and fun bar accoutrements.
But as with Ruby, 79/80ths of these two remarkable women’s worldly possessions went to charities or to be auctioned at galas or, I am so sorry to admit to dear Mother Earth, into the trash.
As with childbirth, I forgot the pain and now feel a sense of pride, accomplishment – and closure.
I’m still banging around my two-story home, but with a clear head and invigorating mission: Culling, donating, tossing – now – while it’s still my decision to make.
Anybody need a coffee mug?
Gail Rosenblum is a journalist, teacher and author of A Hundred Lives Since Then: Essays on Motherhood, Marriage, Mortality & More. She can be reached at [email protected].