After her death, it took me over a year to realize this house was no longer what I needed. In fact, it was sucking me dry financially and my mom had stated at the end that she was worried about that and didn’t want that. But- of course, it takes time to come to hard decisions on your own, so it was last May when I finally had a realtor walk through and last August when I finally cleaned up so that the house could go on the market.
Now lets talk about Jen Lotane clean up and what that looks like. When I go through my stuff I think, “I cant get rid of that, it can go in this bin.” The house became show ready but between the garage and the basement I had over 30 bins of stuff. And here is what happened….4 months after the house had gone on the market it was still not sold. Krista and I were waiting at the bus stop one morning when she said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we unpacked everything and then we sold the house and we had to pack everything back up.” It immediately struck me that we had absolutely no need to unpack everything. Neither one of us had missed ANYTHING that was in those bins. We were free of the stuff, only not really because we had all these damn bins.
Cut to the house is sold. We are moving into an apartment and although we have also rented storage, I know this stuff cannot keep coming with me. So, very slowly I started to empty bins. My rule was if I didn’t see how I could display or use it in a house then it had to go. So- lets talk about that for a minute- a beaded purse that I am pretty sure was my grandmothers- STAYS, a piece of paper where my mother wrote her name- GOES. Seems obvious doesn’t it? But it doesn’t feel that way when you are emotionally attached. Plus, as we got closer and closer to the move, I became more and more emotional and throwing stuff away became trickier and trickier.
One night a week before the move I went to bed totally distraught. I was not sure if I was throwing stuff away because I was really ok with it or because I felt I had to due to the apartment, and I was missing my mom and wanting to grab all the stuff back…every little piece of paper with her handwriting and her name and her doctor’s appointments.
The next morning I woke up and right away one scene from the hospital kept playing over and over again. When this happens, by now you know, I see this as mom communicating with me and this was the kindest communication I had yet received. There was a time when we were all still trying to keep her alive….but she knew already it was her time to go. She woke up and told us she was packing and she was having trouble packing. When we asked her why it was hard for her to pack she said, “I have no room and all these things are too heavy.” Her gestured head pointed toward the IV pole that was feeding her. What I said next, felt melodramatic even at the time, but I knew it was right when she started nodding. I said, “You don’t need to take all that stuff. You only need to take the love.” Replaying that scene I knew she was letting me know I had been right. My sister in law, Candice came to help that day and she had the task of not asking me about stuff, just throwing it away because out of sight out of mind. Nobody should have to do the hard stuff on their own.
I don’t think I am cured completely. I think I will always have difficulty parting with stuff that is attached to a loving person or an amazing memory. In those moments I will ask myself the one question that can get me to throw away everything. Try this sometime. “If I died, what would I want my child to keep of mine?” I want Krista always to know, “You don’t need to take all that stuff. You only need to take the love.”
mystrongmorningcoffee 