Archaeological Dig

My siblings and I are in the midst of an archaeological dig. At least it feels that way. Two days after my mother's memorial service, we commenced the project that had been looming large--cleaning out Mom's apartment and two storage units. Yep--two.

My mother was a "saver" not a "purger". Her second husband was also a "saver" and had seemingly never-ending card files that stored notes and articles about how to organize "stuff", categorize and easily access all the filed information that was put in the many, many banker's boxes lining the many shelving units. In addition to organized clutter (and some not-so organized clutter) my mother being the last surviving member of her family of origin, became the keeper of all family "stuff" from her sisters, brother and parents. So, not only are we going through all of my Mom's things--clothing, closet contents, files and anything else saved since the beginning of time, we are going through her second husband's things, my deceased aunts and uncles saved items, my grandparents "important papers" and a few boxes of my deceased father's things that have been saved for us kids 'to have some day.'

My sisters, brother and I have each been going over to the apartment for a few hours after work each day, then working on the weekends together. I can't explain adequately the range of emotions we are experiencing as we go through this process. It seems to never end! Last weekend, with all of our families pitching in to help, we made 3 trips to Good Will, 1 trip to the recycling center with a mini van filled with paper recycling, a mini-van-filled trip to the "shredding" place, and countless trips to the apartment complex dumpsters. Most of the stuff we're throwing away, recycling or shredding, but once in a while we're finding a family gem that we feel we should hold onto, if not for ourselves, for our cousins and their families. Suddenly we find ourselves in the role of 'keepers of the family history', knowing that the many documents we hold in our hands are originals. It takes a lot of time and energy to decide the proper disbursement of so many of the things we're coming across. Many things we didn't know still existed, yet are family treasures for sure.

While it has been exhausting work to do on the heals of already being exhausted from caring for mom, her subsequent death, her memorial service and then immediately into cleaning out her things...there have been moments of "fun" when we come across something from our childhood or something that brings us right back to memories of being at Grandma's house for Sunday dinner and enjoying her wonderful pot roast.

Our deadline for having everything moved out is the 15th of this month. We have had numerous offers of help, but really, at this point, we are needing to do a good portion of the work ourselves as we determine what we want to keep and what can be tossed. Many things, like photos, we're taking to our homes and storing until we are feeling up to going through those. We have also decided to wait on determining the fate of some items as emotions are still a little raw and some items clearly fall into that gray area. Do we keep it? Do we get rid of it? What should we do with it. So these go into the "hold for now" boxes.

I can't tell you how it feels to have an end in sight to this huge endeavor. Again, such a mixture of emotions. On one hand, it will mark the end of this journey and "project"--mom being diagnosed, mom going off chemo, hospice, taking care of mom, mom dying, cleaning out all of Mom's things; and mark the beginning of a new journey--life after Mom's cancer. I'll confess I'm a little eager to experience life on the next part of the path.