Like moving, only not
This time last week, Ron and I headed down to Saint John and picked a literal van full of boxes and furniture from my grandfather’s apartment.
It was hard. Even pre-sorted and boxed and waiting.
After, on the way out of town, Ron and I stopped at a Chinese restaurant for our anniversary dinner, which was the next day. Good food.
We unloaded the van quickly, all these boxes stacked around the house, me making quick decisions as the where (oh god where) do I even put these things. I said we’d take all the linens, which we could always use, and anything in the kitchen (given Sarah is headed off to college). Boxes and piles are still everywhere. Some new frames are on the wall, on any available nail I could find.
Sometimes I catch one of the frames, and think to myself that it’s out of place. The same frame I’ve seem for thirty years, the same photos inside – just on the wrong wall. Me, me and my mom and my brother, with 1979, 1980, 1981 written under each photo in my grandmother’s neat slanted printing. Another frame, me and my two cousins, always children.
I now own real art – a chalk sketch of my father playing at a music festival, the program taped to the back with a newpaper clipped about the gallery show for the picture. Another pen sketch of the hospital where my grandfather worked, tall and big on the hill. They tore it down a few years ago, after standing empty and useless.
We’ve gone through all the boxes by now, most of which we packed back up. Too many decisions to make on each piece. Thankfully, my aunt had said that I didn’t have to try and keep it all, it was okay if I put what I didn’t want in a yard sale. I’m glad she said that, nothing’s worse than Memorial Tupperware. 
This way I don’t feel like I have to keep it all.
Even with the stuff I want to keep, there’s a bit of hoarding going on. There are all these everyday items with things I had given them but that are now returned. Unpacking was less like treasure hunting but still with treasures inside.
Just ones that make you want to weep.
4 Responses to “Like moving, only not”
I know how hard that is. We had to go through my husbands’s mom and dad’s stuff when they died. My husband’s grandma was not happy with our decison to give away clothes and stuff, but you can’t keep everything. She also didn’t want us to unplug the answering machine because it had a message on it from him a few minutes before he died, but we had to and so the messgae was lost (it was a digital machine so of course the message wasn’t savable.) At least there are some good memories in the boxes too.
Hard though the idea of Memorial Tupperware is kinda funny.
Sometimes when things sit in boxes in the basement for a while, they lose some of their lustre and become easier to put in a garage sale or give to someone. But “a while” can be years. And I occurs to me that my mom only just got rid of the sofa bed she took when her mom died — in 1983. So don’t worry about it. You’ll do the right thing.
BTW, your feed isn’t showing up for some reason.
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When my grandmother passed away a couple of years ago, my uncle had already gone through everything by the time we got to her apartment – we were getting her dresser and a few odds and ends. It’s definitely hard and strange to arrive and see everything in boxes. It makes you wonder how your life can end up packed up into piles of “This goes to so-and-so, this goes to the church rummage sale…”
Once the grief eases just a little, I find it nice to have some of the everyday things. I think of my aunt every time I use her wire whisk, my paternal grandmother when I take a recipe out of her wooden recipe box, and my maternal grandmother every time I take clothes out of her dresser.
*Big hugs* to you. It’s hard to go through.
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