Memento Mori
Oct. 12th, 2018 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompson
My mother loved collecting chatchkes. Some because she loved them, some because they were given to her, some just because they were there. Most of them are not really to my taste, so my plan has been for some time to sell them on eBay. Why shouldn’t someone who actually likes this stuff have it? And why shouldn’t I make a little cash on the side?
I’m keeping some of the chatchkes because I do like them, but there are others I’m keeping because I feel too guilty about selling them. These were dear to my mother and I just can’t bring myself to get rid of them. Let whoever has to clean out this house when I croak and won’t know what my mother loved deal with them. (Sorry, unknown person of the future.)
It’s odd the power that things can have over us. We shouldn’t let them, but we do. Still, I console myself that I am getting rid of a whole bunch of junk. That is, treasures that I do not sufficiently appreciate.
I have put some of the eBay plan into action, but I still have a ways to go before listing and selling. It will only be two weeks today since I left my job and I’ve had some serious depressurizing to do. I’m slowly getting there. I think I have plenty of time to bring this plan about, but we all think that, don’t we? One never knows when time will run out. But I would like to get this junk gone before that poor above-mentioned person has to deal with it. I really want to streamline this house. Need. I need to. For my own sanity.
Maybe I’ll even have the gumption to start cleaning out my mother’s room soon. It will be three years in January since she passed. I’ve moved things into her room in temporary storage, managed to give away all her clothes to the cleaning lady (who actually did the job of cleaning out the closet), but mostly her room remains a time capsule. I just haven’t had the heart to deal with it—and frankly, I see no reason to push myself. It’s an important part of the grieving and moving on cycle, but it’s also important to do things when the time is right for me.
Those things in that room are not my mom, much of it not even vaguely precious to her, but they are the last tenuous physical link I have to her. I need to get to the point of getting rid of them without feeling like I’m getting rid of her.
There are people who will say (who have said) that I should bite the bullet and just do it. But I fundamentally disagree with them. Grief is a process. It must be moved through on its own timetable. And only the one who is doing the grieving knows what that timetable is.
In the meantime, I am surrounded by junk, both precious and not. But I am in motion. I hope to stay in motion, to keep moving forward until time stops.
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:10 pm (UTC)lizziebelle: (little me)
From: [personal profile] lizziebelle IP Address: (4.16.8.144)
When I did my big cleanout a few years ago, there were a few things I just couldn't let go of because my dad had given them to me. Fortunately, they were small. :)
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:11 pm (UTC)pjthompson: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pjthompson IP Address: (2605:e000:5ac3:e900:69eb:3b19:fd63:a094)
Mine are a mixture of big and small, and some of them are holdovers from when my dad passed. Such is life. And, like I said, somebody else's problem. :-)
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:11 pm (UTC)elsie_flynn: (Default)
From: [personal profile] elsie_flynn IP Address: (2600:100f:b123:746:3911:3156:a983:15ae)
Nextdoor.com may be an easier option than ebay, and it is less dangerous than selling on Craigslist. In my neighborhood people post ads all the time.
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:12 pm (UTC)pjthompson: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pjthompson IP Address: (2605:e000:5ac3:e900:3c19:9cb2:bb06:355e)
Thanks for the tip!
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:13 pm (UTC)elsie_flynn: (Default)
From: [personal profile] elsie_flynn IP Address: (71.63.167.75)
You are welcome!
Thank you for the new word, I've never heard it, had to look it up. In my language tchatchkes is pronounced like "Tzatzkes", like in "tzatziki". It originates from Yiddish, I guess.
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:14 pm (UTC)pjthompson: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pjthompson IP Address: (2605:e000:5ac3:e900:9068:f967:5dd7:6a26)
Yes, it's a Yiddish word and I think it can be spelled a number of ways. I've always loved the way it rolls of the tongue.
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:14 pm (UTC)wayfaringwordhack: (I heart you)
From: [personal profile] wayfaringwordhack IP Address: (90.9.152.206)
Grief is definitely a process, and each of us takes the time we need. Hugs as you work through it.
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:14 pm (UTC)pjthompson: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pjthompson IP Address: (2605:e000:5ac3:e900:9068:f967:5dd7:6a26)
Thank you, sweetie.
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:15 pm (UTC)fayance: (Default)
From: [personal profile] fayance IP Address: (2602:306:cfb2:6060:a4f6:eae3:de8f:fdcb)
I have one keepsake from my grandmother, who died in 1999, and one from my mom, who passed away five years ago; I also have several of the baby quilts she made for my kids when they were born (they're all adults now). None of them have any monetary value, but I mainly just wanted to keep my memories and that was fine. But when my only son died three years ago, I had a much harder time dealing with all his things. He lived with me, he was increasingly ill the last year of his life, and all his things were all over my house. He loved to write and his journals were something I just could not let go; I still read them sometimes when I am really missing him, and they both comfort me by allowing me to mentally 'hear' his voice again through his writing, but also make me grieve for him even more sometimes. I kept a couple of his favorite tobacco pipes, a lot of his books, and his favorite cap. Most of the other things he owned I gave to his best friends, and I gave his father a painting of mountains that our son painted a few months before he died at age 31. It's only been three years (he died Sept 2015)so I don't know how these remnants of his life here will strike me emotionally in the coming years; right now I just miss him so much at times that the sight of his handwriting in his journals, the bookmarks he left in his fave books he was still reading or re-reading when he died, all these things are both precious but so painful, it almost feels unbearable that he could be gone forever at such a young, normally vibrant age for a man. His sister turned 31 this past weekend, she has autism and functions on a 6 year old level, and she was very subdued this year and broke into deep sobs of grief when two cards arrived in the mail for her, because every year her brother would make her a card from scratch that would always make her laugh, and she told me, "I miss my brother so so much." I do the best I can to make all her birthdays happy ones since my son passed, but I am no substitute for the special bond she had with him, and her birthday was rather bittersweet this time around. Last year her younger sister came from her home in another city and took her out for manicures and to a movie and lunch, etc. and that distracted her and made her happy; but this year it was just the two of us and my plans to take her out shopping and to eat fizzled when she cried over her brother and then refused to go out at all. She allowed me to go get her Chick-Fil-A (her fave place!) in the drive-thru but other than that she was just very quiet and subdued all day. So yes, grief is such an ongoing process, you never know what is going to hit you or when, you might feel like you need or want to get rid of so many things one day then cry bitterly months later because you regret giving that particular book to one of his friends, sigh.
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Date: 2019-08-14 10:15 pm (UTC)pjthompson: (Default)
From: [personal profile] pjthompson IP Address: (23.243.20.122)
I'm sorry you've had such a hard time. I hope you can find some peace.