My Mom was a lot of things but I'm finally letting it go. Why carry grudges that no longer matter. My Mother was my worst enemy growing up, a sad kind of ghost in my mid years, and a human being at her end. I'm a grudge holder. If someone hurt me I never forget. I've just learned to stop picking scabs. I had to to find my own balance. Sometimes bad parents aren't bad parents by choice. Any child of a mentally ill parents can tell you that. I just had to learn how to let go of what she was as a child and learn to love the wounded person she was now. I fought it tooth and nail. The whole time I was fighting it I was saving everything of theirs. I couldn't give away Mom's things with Mom still alive. That just isn't right. So I kept it all in tubs under the pinballs against the wall. Out of sight out of mind.
I've finally started throwing it out. I have to let things go. I went to two garage sales this weekend. Both were children selling off Mom and Dad's stuff. We're becoming an epidemic. Adult children selling the folks stuff for a buck. I will not do that to my kids. They'd toss it before the ambulance door shut.. Unless they piss me off,I'm sorting it for them. I'm starting by liberating mom and dads stuff. It's time. I'm parting with the tea cups I really don't like. A couple for the sons girls, a couple for tea parties with my granddaughter. The rest need to go. And lots of things do/did. Last week I let go. Then went away for a couple days. This week the rest goes. I'm keeping the photos but not much else. A pretty glass item here and there, my great grandpas rocking chair. Some family things. The rest is gone. I gave old photos to people who were in them. Gave my cousin letters his dad wrote as he traveled the world at eighteen. Letters his grandmother wrote to her sister. Mom had them. We figure Dad collecting stamps comes into play. My Dad's Army things to a son. Some china to the other. The rest recycled or donated.
It feels good. I needed to do it before my kids got it some day. I needed to cut the emotional ties. Get rid of the emotional clutter. I'm keeping things that make me smile, like Mom's weird JELLO book of recipes. I'd like to meet the person who wrote that. Maybe they can make me understand why anyone in the right mind puts celery in JELLO. Geh!
And I'm also keeping one tiny can of ginger ale.
The last one in Mom's ginger ale stash in her room. She almost ran out. We kept her hooked into the ginger ale back streets, she never ran out. She loved her ginger ale and they'd give us five or six extra to hide in case they ran low. Shirley wanted ginger ale and by God she would get it. All it took to keep her happy was a little can of ginger ale with a bendy straw and the straw was optional. A little can just like this
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