I’m tired of writing out Weekly Photo Challenge so I’m creating a new acronym: WPC. And, since I’m a lazy typist, I’ll create WWC (Weekly Writing Challenge) while I’m at it. Which explains the title of this post. Just FYI.
In case you have not read enough of my posts to figure out my sun rises and sets on my granddaughters; it does. So you shouldn’t be surprised to see the little angels show up now and then for WPC 😉
In this photo, my 2-year old angel looks out at the backyard and contemplates. On what, I don’t know. But she rarely stays in one place for 30 seconds, so I captured a photo of her silhouette that morning.
Forget about whining “it’s lonely at the top”. You worked your way up, so you could be there. Now you are. So, be happy. (sorry, but I’m crabby this morning)
Through no effort on my part did I become the last member of my immediate family. Believe me when I tell you – it sucks.
Every day I will come across something that I can’t wait to tell my sister, mom, or dad about. Except I can’t. And there is no one else in the world I can share it with. A thing that only parents & siblings could talk about, and I don’t mean deep dark secrets. The silly things you experience as a family. No one else can “get it”, even if you carefully explained the back history leading up to whatever it was, it would not be meaningful to anyone – except your parent/sibling.
These little memories, and the need to share them, are tough. But it’s the “stuff” – packed in boxes taking up half the garage, waiting for you (and only you, because you’re the last one) to deal with it.
Winter will be here next month, so the boxes have to go. This means opening and deciding what to do about the contents before we can park vehicles inside, out of the weather. I have no time to procrastinate.
STUFF
It hasn’t even been a full week since the boxes arrived. My sister’s fiancé and his brother, drove a truck and large trailer filled with boxes for 670 miles, to give me the family “stuff”. Not only my sister’s stuff, but mother and dad’s stuff too.
I have gone through three boxes so far – opening one every day. One had my mom’s little diary/notebooks she kept when we were kids. The one from 1958 was only half filled in. The last entry was my birth weight and length. Mom was too busy to keep writing after that…
The second box had mom’s kitchen odds and ends, including her rolling-pin that she (and dad) got for a wedding gift. That will come in handy. I have granddaughters who need to roll out Christmas cookies soon.
The third box belonged to my sister. It had yarn and knitted blocks for the afghan she started while we were taking care of mom. Seeing the bright-colored squares brought tears. We both were working on afghans during that time, to help us stay sane. I tell myself I must try to finish it someday, and put it with my craft stash.
Today’s box? I have not gotten it from the garage yet. Truth be told, I am still in my jammies, drinking too much coffee, while I write this. As I think about which box I might choose today, it occurs to me (I am waking up now) that I will have to open more than one box per day, to be finished by November. Is that good or bad? Is the “getting it over with” approach more beneficial emotionally than “strolling down memory lane”?
Leave it to me to take a different approach, a merging of the “getting it over with” and “memory lane”. I’ll call it the “sorting” approach. I’ll do an initial sorting of items (keep for the kids, Good Will, and mine). Then the old “just crap” that should never left at mom’s house to begin with, can go to the dump.
I can “stroll” as slowly as I like this winter. Savor the love letters mom kept in a special wooden box (from the guy she didn’t marry), family history told in scrapbooks my mom put together as well as files researched with the genealogy society. Now completing our family tree is up to me. I haven’t found mom’s computer yet, but a lot more files are on there too.
Suddenly, I feel overwhelmed and sorry for myself.
I already have boxes of STUFF stacked in my office because I don’t have shelves or cabinets to put things away yet. Now here comes another house-full of STUFF to get shoved into the corners and crevices of my new house.
After giving myself a pep-talk about taking it one day at a time, and not to get my panties or (blood-pressure) in a bunch, I decide to suck it up and get dressed in my grubby un-packing boxes clothes. If there’s one good thing about being last, it must be that you can keep or toss whatever you please.
Normally I write about frivolous things with smart-ass humor, or climb up on my soap box and rant good and loud. This post is different.
My sister Melanie and I said good-bye to our terminally ill mother last spring. We leaned on one another during the months we took care of her, and then as we carried out her last wishes. We had lost our father in 1993 and now it was just the two of us. Being “the writer” of the family it fell to me to write mom’s obituary. It had to be perfect. I struggled for 3 days on the thing until I couldn’t find anything more to re-write. That and I had the thing memorized.
If you have ever had the misfortune to write one, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. How do you sum up somebody’s entire life? Especially someone you have known and loved your whole life. Writing a stranger’s obituary would be so much easier. Just the facts. No memories. No emotions.
Last month I got a phone call – Melanie died. WTF?? How could she just die in her sleep like that? She’s my younger sister. The second shock was the cause of her death. The coroner explained to me that Mel was healthy – except she had advanced stages of coronary artery disease. Her arteries were so blocked that her poor heart simply gave out. I can almost hear my mom holler, “Well, SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!”. Mom always did get to the point.
So, here I sit sweating over another obituary. Mel’s memorial will be on the 16th, and tonight is my self-inflicted deadline. At 10:08 PM (PDT) I stopped fussing with the copy, closed my eyes and sent my sister’s obit and photo to our local newspaper, and a Bay Area newspaper. Maybe some of her former classmates/co-workers/buddies will see it and drop by.
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