In my office, I'm almost through all the financial/business papers, and getting down now to the really hard stuff…letters my parents wrote to each other, letters I was written in high school and college, datebooks from high school. Even the file of clippings my mom saved is tough, because she wrote notes on them, and it was the most recent file she kept, so it reflects her interests and passions in her last years.
At the same time, I've been in need of my father's parent's wills in order to claim some property that's turned up (that's a whole other story in and of itself) and I wasn't able to find them in all of their left-behind papers. Why did my parents save recipes, newspaper clippings, endless financial statements, checks, a huge collection of Absolut Vodka ads, the closing file from buying their house in 1975, but not their parents wills? Or death certificates? My parents' wills and death certificates are pretty much the most important, to-save papers in all of my Kondo-ing. I find it hard to believe my dad didn't save these things, but he was kind of disorganized. Did my mother throw them out at some point after he died, thinking she wouldn't need them, but she would need the Absolut ads? Did my grandparents even have wills? The strange byproduct of not being able to find the wills is that I am mad at parents about this.
Marie Kondo talks a bit about the emotional aspects of going through these types of papers. It's very hard for me because everything starts to swirl together: I'm mad because I can't find things they should have saved, I'm mad because they saved too many other useless things, and I'm also mad because it's hard for me to get rid of these useless things. Then I get mad because my hanging file breaks, and because my leg has fallen asleep under me as I sit awkwardly on the floor. When something like this happens, I have to stop my tidying and go do something else for a bit. I'll come back to it all later.
(Next week there is free shredding in my town, so that's my office tidying deadline! I think I can make it and it's good to have a hard stop to it.)
Right after we brought my mom out here, when she was in sort of mid-stage dementia, she was living alone in this house even though she really should have had a full-time caregiver. I was trying to introduce that concept slowly, even though it really was an emergency, to go easy on her, because she was of course dead set against anyone taking care of her except me. I left her one night after having dinner with her, and drove to my house 10 minutes away. She called me as soon as I got home, freaking out because the television wasn't working (this was a common theme at this time). She was not only upset about this but very anxious and sad and really did not want to be left alone (and should not have been alone, to be fair). My husband and I came over, "fixed" the TV, calmed her down a bit, and then went back home. I called her when I got home and heard the familiar blare of her beloved MSNBC. Either she was feigning calm or really was OK, but she said flatly "I'm watching Chris Matthews," said goodnight, and hung up.
I found the below clipping last night; it's from 2008, several years before she really became sick. My parents were living in Washington, D.C. when they met and fell in love, and that city was so important to my mom for so many reasons, not just because of the romance with my dad but because of its political history (politics being her favorite thing) and also because she just thought it was beautiful. She makes a note on this article about what's really important about it: "Not about Chris Matthews — about view from window of a snowy Washington afternoon." I miss her of course, but what I miss for her is being able to have and enjoy her thoughts, observances, and memories.
