Pushing On

There is an old saying: somethings never change. But I have recently found the things you think will never change will. So it seems the sadness ebbs and flows and that doesn't end either, but I am learning to live with it. Today I took another step, I talked to someone about my mother's books. I have thus far not been willing to let others in to buy anything direct from my mother's house. My sisters have told me multiple times it would be easier but I feel as though it would not be easy for me. My sisters and brother have nudged me along to make progress and sometimes I have to step back and re-group because they are pushing on. I too will push on.

So if you have never been in my mother's house the bedroom my brother used as a kid became her tv room and library. One wall is floor to ceiling cook books and two other walls have book shelves that run the length of the walls about 3 feet high with books and in a couple places those book shelves are 2 deep not books but complete book shelves. Then there is her bedroom which has I think 6 book shelves that are 6 ft tall each again all books. And just for good measure she has one more shelf in the front hallway next to the front door full of children's books. So to say the least mom liked to read. We have already gotten rid of quite a few boxes of romance novels my grandma's favorite that mother would also read but her favorite was the westerns. Her Louis L'Amour books. At the end she gave away some of the Louis L'Amour books she wanted others to see the scenery she had scene through his words. Even I have one laying next to my bed and one of the girls that helped take care of mom carries one with her all the time. I hope mom has gotten to meet Louis L'Amour in heaven and she can hear the stories first hand now.

Back to the books. So I found a bookstore that when I walked through the front door of this old house I said to the man behind the desk. I think you are going to be able to help. He said, "with what?" I explained the situation and that his store looked like my mother's room that she spent most of her time. He was so kind and I finally said yes. That he could come and look at the books. He said he will bring everything he needs and for me to call next week so we can make arrangements for him to come over. I of course looked around and we spoke of books and he said my mother had been a good influence on me and my interest in history and books. And yes. I walked out with a book. A Marjorie Rawlings book South Moon Under.

Since I was already down in St. Pete I thought I might as well eat lunch at mom's favorite place down there. Fourth Street Shrimp Store another old Florida place. I had fried shrimp and fried clams. It was so good I brought another home for my brother, Al.

On the way back to her house I thought of what I need to do before someone can go through the books. I need to pick out a few that I want and then that moment of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of books. I know at one point she had counted and she had like 800 cookbooks. When I got to the house I stood and looked at the room and just couldn't even move. The first book I see and everyone else is one that the cover faces out, A Flower Grows in Ireland by Ron Wilson. I never knew why but it was the last book her sister Jan read before she died. She got it on her last trip to Ireland. I don't know if mom ever read the book but I know it is not being sold. It will find a place in my house. I only know this piece of information because about a year ago in preparation for mom going home from rehab my sister Beth helped me clean that room and when we straightened up the books that book was moved and mom had a fit as only she could have and the book was put back where it had been for well  more than 20 years and where it sits now because even knowing that I am going to take that book home I couldn't bring myself to remove it from the shelf.

So again, I went back to her bedroom to make sure the shelves back there were accessible and tried to figure out how to get more light back there so that the man from the bookstore can see what he he is looking at. But within the next few weeks the room that has been pretty much untouched will to be disassembled in the name of progress. It is the same feeling I felt when my sisters packed up some of the things from the living room for that my brother wants to keep. In my head it makes no sense not to touch the things that must be touched. I know I would rather do it myself than have someone else do it for me. As it was in the beginning I must make way for change and push on.

What are you saving for?

Some people save for the future, for a rainy day, for a vacation but my mom seamed to want to save everything. She saved her good clothes for a cruise. She saved pictures to share and she saved history and memories and things that might someday be valuable as though they were all things that were valuable.

It is funny though because my mother and grandmother both used good things as though they were everyday things. The living room furniture we sit on is very old wicker furniture. Original cushions and paint, if you know anything about wicker furniture you would think this stuff should be in a museum and we sit on it, sleep on it and have Christmas every year on it. Grandma never drank out of a plastic cup. She was always drinking her water or soda out of a fancy glass. She said, if you have it you might as well use it. She would however wear her good clothes everyday, just because they were nice.

But back to the saving part of my mom. She always had the spirit to save things that she thought might one day have a value. Like a bank account in her house. She saved the books we read as kids, she probably has every golden book written before 1974 and cookbooks. She saved the Fischer Price toys we played with as kids. Recently I even found the Barbie dream house folded up at the top of the closet. Really mom.

Her and Grandma liked to go to garage sales and thrift stores and they each had their things they liked to find. Grandma always liked angels and frogs and mom always liked birds and St. Francis and we joke about the shrine on the butcher's block in the living room. What you don't have a butcher's block in your living room? Well your dad probably doesn't have a cannon either. What can I say? My parents were always different.

But now mom and grandma are both gone and what my mother said we would go through and clean out is now down to myself and my siblings. My brother has cleaned up and cleaned out the kitchen but the cabinets go to the ceiling and he said, you know there is stuff in all of them. Yep. Glass doesn't get the money it used to. People don't care if they drink out of fancy glasses or ones from Target. Sorry Target but there is something to be said for crystal. Not that the stuff mom had was anything fantastic just better than the everyday glasses we drank out of. And people don't know the difference between a champagne flute and a sherry glass anymore and don't care. So they would not have a set of 8 of each plus rocks glasses and tall glasses and wine glasses and you see how many glasses one can have.

So I have told my sisters that I wanted to do some of this on my own at first. Why? I don't really know. I just know to see things thrown out that my mom held on to right now is just too much for me.
I had cleaned out stuff from her bedroom back in the summer trying to get her to use her own bed to sleep in instead of sleeping on that ancient old wicker couch but even with her room cleaned out some she did not want to sleep in there. She felt that if something happened to her back there no one would come looking for her.

Yesterday I pulled out a few boxes of things that were already boxed to get rid of and filled a couple boxes with things that have no sentimental attachment and will try to sell them at a church garage sale today. But when finished loading the car I sat and looked around and started to see my mom in the things that she saved. I know I don't have to do this now and it is probably too soon but if I don't do it someone else will want to do it for me and then I will get upset and then I will be like mom. I feel it. If someone touches the wrong thing now, I would put up a wall that my mom would. She would be ridiculous and let us get rid of nothing. But I learned as I got older if you showed her a few things that she to had no attachment to that she would start and next thing you knew she could get a room cleaned up and box up things she was ready to get rid of. It just had to be her idea.

I have found myself the last few weeks wearing good things I would never wear because, well I felt like wearing them. I know no future is guaranteed to us so I might as well wear the things I like and eat off the good dishes and drink from the fancy glasses because what am I saving them for. The future doesn't care about the past. It is a hard pill to swallow that some of the things I want to save no one else will. And I know my house can't hold all the things I want to save so that part is going to take some time and the fact that I have no children to instill the value of these items just because my mom saw a value in them.

I think it all comes back to my memory. I remember my mom telling me that the butcher's block came from the Fish Restaurant that used to be at the bottom of the hill in Maas Brother's parking lot before you went across the causeway and how it sat in our garage for years until my mom said it finally did not smell like fish anymore and she sanded and varnished it and how it will take 4 grown men to lift the top but the legs are light as a feather. Or how that wicker furniture came out of a house down the street from an estate sale. Original paint and cushions. Mom was very proud of that purchase. She cherished the pictures my grandma painted. The one in the living room on brown wrapping paper that is a chalk drawing of a fishing boat or the train or flowes she painted. She would paint ties that my great grandfather wore that had the L&N trains that he worked on. We don't have one of those but we do have a picture of him wearing one. Grandma signed the things she painted simply Jane. Don't forget the nativity scene that mom painted when we were kids. So simple but not so valuable? Well to me they are.

As they say you can't take it with you. Otherwise she would have had us pack it up for her. Just kidding. She thought by saving these items that one day, some day she would cash in or share her wealth which may not have any monetary value but Sentimental Value that is what a lot of these things have and held for her and now me.

Miss you mom.