I just completed my 9687th hour at my mother-in-law’s house as we continue down the long road of Will It Ever End? It has been a strange few weeks in which we have found ourselves all over the adulting map. We spent a few hours with an estate lawyer mapping out the eventual end of our own lives, taking a queue from the experience of closing down my MIL’s estate. “Estate” is a strong word here–as mentioned before, her estate included just a handful of possessions yet still has provided a few challenges.
As with every single move, even those in which there is no “new” residence, the packing, sorting, editing, and bequeathing has been never-ending. Each time we finish one project, seven more pop up as if we are stuck in a hamster wheel while playing whack-a-mole. We empty one cabinet and find three more to do the same. Didn’t we do those already? We empty the next cabinet and find an entire hidden section behind a pile of serving trays. How many serving trays did this woman need!?!
We declare a closet empty (hurray!) only to remember that we’d simply relocated all of its contents to the bed in the guest room (dammit!).
Three months in we have solidified this pattern:
- Talk ourselves into going over to the house.
- Dig through drawers, cabinets, bins, and closets with the constant distraction of “Oh, wow…I forgot about this…come look!”
- Succumb to the sudden exhaustion that is the sidekick of grief.
- Declare it a productive few hours while calling it a day.
- Quickly realize that the mountain still looms.
Just yesterday as we declared it a really, really productive day, we looked out the window and saw the shed. Wait, the shed. Shoot. Forgot about that. What’s in the shed? Should we look now? Wait until another day? We looked. It was filled with storage bins collected from the homes of the previously deceased with, I suppose, the intention of digging in and unpacking unknown treasures. I’m sure those bins were relocated with the best of intentions yet, there they were, years later, very much untouched, and now…now what?
Do we need to unpack those bins? Will we be unpacking them just so we have to then repack them? What do you suppose is even in them?
The easiest option would have been to simply load those bins into the car and drive them over to the dump without ever peeking at their contents. Easy? Oh, how we would love easy. But “easy” doesn’t seem to be on the schedule for 2024. We could just make out piles of pictures through the sides of those bins and, well, why is it so hard to throw out pictures? Those pictures, whatever they were, had never even blipped on our radar, why couldn’t we just pretend we’d never seen them?
The bins now live in our garage, again with the best intentions to dig through them at a future date.
I have learned a lot about grief in the last months–especially about how each individual will handle their sorrow differently. I have found a gentle side, within myself, that I didn’t even know existed (nor did my husband–he’s quite fond of it). This gentle side seemed to bubble up as I started the hand-in-emotional-hand walk down my husband’s path of grief.
It has been a lonely path.
We have asked, far too often, where everyone else is hiding–why all of this unpleasant work has been left strictly for the two of us rather than filled with offers of help from the remaining family members?
Quick PSA: Can we remove the phrase “But you didn’t ask” from our vocabulary? Especially when it comes to grief? When in the bowels of grief, energy is depleted–even the seemingly minimal energy that it takes to ask for help.
For much of the first months, I was riding solo. I spent a few days each week at my mother-in-law’s house alone, filling boxes, organizing piles, and hoping that my husband would soon feel brave enough to join me. I’m not sure he ever felt brave enough, but he did join me. Watching the range of emotions skirt across his face as he packed his mother’s home for a final move that wouldn’t end with her walking through her new home’s door was torture.
We persevered until we had everything neatly organized into clearly labeled boxes–all ready for pickup from her beloved church. Her five-line will requested that the contents of her home be gifted to her church for its annual fundrasier: an enormous yard sale. And then, because the only law we live by is Murphy’s Law and because “easy” is not on the schedule for 2024, we learned that 2025 would be the first year said church would not host that annual yardsale and, therefore, there would be no need for the contents of anyone’s home–even its most beloved member’s.
Wait now, what?
I suppose the good news is that the house was perfectly packed. The bad news, of course, was that we had no idea what to do with the endless boxes. For a few days, I obsessively called local organizations with offers to donate. Yes, I have a whole kitchen ready to be delivered, just say the word. Hello, I have a closet full of clothes to donate. Can you tell me if you’re taking furniture…we have three bedroom sets, a living room set, a dining room table, and a China cabinet.
I’m not being dramatic when I say that I could not give this stuff away.
I took a few stabs at giving away or selling items on the local marketplace sites. Then, I learned just how quickly a simple transaction can turn belligerent as potential recipients become angry at my inability to meet their wonky pick-up times or low-ball offers. Thank you, six-pound baby Jesus for creating the “block” function on social media.
Just four days ago, Rich and I stood side-by-side and watched the entire contents of his mother’s home get loaded into a large, black trailer. We do not know who will own each piece next. In what sounds like a mafia move, I found “a guy” willing to take it all, no questions asked, for free. Hell, “the guy” even would have packed it all if we’d engaged him months prior. Our only instructions were to take everything we wanted out of the home and then to meet him at the house at a predetermined time.
I suspect, by now, each box has been opened and unpacked as “the guy” looks for treasures to sell at the local fleamarkets–digital or otherwise. I do hope he found some good ones. I hope that, in the coming months, we don’t feel that sudden angst that comes with realizing you gave away an item that you really meant to keep.
For now, I just hope each treasure finds the perfect new home in which to form the perfect new memory until the time comes, once again, for it to be packed away for someone else.