I am not the only family member to be a life-long saver of papers and things.
Recently, I tackled a top contender in the high hanging fruit department—letters my mum wrote to my sister in the two years leading up to my parents’ move more than 50 years ago from the USA back to England, their homeland, and the place where my sister was living. For, many reasons I won’t go into these letters are heartbreaking and painful to read (with some interesting tidbits and observations about me), but what I want to share here is my mum’s reported attempts to downsize. I say my mum because although my dad certainly participated in this process, he had no great attachment to stuff beyond his books, records, and family correspondence. The emotional burden, as well as much of the decision-making, was squarely with my mum.
My parents lived in the USA for 18 years in three different houses, the last of which had three floors, a finished basement, and a large garage. To add to the challenge, at the time my mum needed to tackle this task she was not well. About a year and a half before the big move, the vision was that they would bring very little with them—just books, records, my mum’s art and other pictures, some linens, dishes and flatware, and the clothes they wanted to wear. They would “sell off” everything else and start over fresh. “I’ll feel like a bride starting a new house.” At the time, the dream included living in a warmer climate at least some of the year. My mum was very excited about exploring the shops in London for her new furnishings.
Somehow this vision morphed over the next few months. Maybe visits to shops in London had revealed prices that were much higher than my mum remembered. Maybe they found that the market for their furniture and other possessions was poorer than they had expected. Maybe it was all too much like work, especially given my mum’s delicate condition.
Not that they didn’t part with some things.
My mum had taught art and drama over the years, producing elaborate costumes, scenery, and paper maché props and puppets, some of which her young students made. Although it caused her some distress to give away the giant dragon and the cow, she found a neighbor who had connections with organizations that would want these acting-related materials. Then Dad, who took pity on Mum, seeing her agony at parting with the fruits of her teaching labors, threw out all the art work done with kids and students.
He also tackled the garage. There they found a trunk containing a bit of her mother’s wedding dress and her grandmother’s petticoats, my sister’s first baby blankets and a quilt that Mum had made. Leaks in the garage had ruined most of the contents, except for a few smocked dresses that Mum was going to rescue for my sister’s new baby. Had the move been a year later, I would happily have taken household items off her hands, but I was about to leave for my last year of college. So, the lovely woman who cleaned our house became the welcome conduit for some of these goods. Mum also gave her our clothes from when we were young (why did she still have these?) and many of the outfits she wore when she traveled with my dad. But it felt like “murder” to her having to part with these things.
They managed to sell the piano they bought when I was seven and indicated my interest in having lessons to the representative from the moving company they’d hired. The same man would have bought three of Mum’s paintings, but she didn’t want to sell these much to Dad’s surprise.
The huge cedar closet on the third floor was deemed “frightening.” Two months before they moved, I sorted through my sister’s and my own things on this same third top floor. My mum described my efforts as “the most orderly chaos imaginable.”
More than once, the letters to my sister offered the stern warning, “Don’t be a hoarder!” Her reaction when the junk removal people came to finish off the garage was, “How could we collect so much stuff?” She was sick about it when she saw my sister’s old doll pram, all rusted. Mum thought that the clearing out would never end.
But end, it did. And instead of the bare minimum, they sent across most of their furniture and a great deal more (see the cover image). I know because a year before Mum died and had to move to a nursing home, my sister and her family and I spent four solid weeks clearing out her possessions. In addition to what seemed like her complete American wardrobe of elegant suits and dresses that I doubt she ever wore once back in England, there was a large suitcase of marionettes made in the 1920s, puppets from American years, and her own childhood books, plus all the accumulation of 30 years living in the same apartment. The clincher was the pair of matching yellow chintz bedspreads my sister and I had as children we found in the attic crawl space.
This post is not meant to be a criticism. Far from it. My mum made a valiant effort at a difficult time of her life to make decisions about what was important to her. I understand how hard it was, and I feel her pain, as I make my own choices. But there are lessons here, too—lessons my mum wanted me to learn. “Don’t be a hoarder!” But even as organized people, whose homes don't reveal it, she was, and I am a hoarder. It’s a hard mindset to change. She certainly never did. But she had neither the tools (scanner, camera, computer) nor the time to document her life as I do. In doing so and whittling away bit by bit, I do find it easier to let go of the things without losing the evidence of a life lived.