Moving On

By Deanna J. Bennett

“What am I going to do with my travel albums?

Photo albums documenting my mother’s travels from the Great Wall of China to Yalta in the Black Sea, and a myriad of places in between crammed two long bookshelves. Her shoulders slumped in sadness but her brow wrinkled with hope as she said, “Do you think anyone wants them?”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” I said, “They mean a lot to you. We’ll make room for them in your new place.”

The new place would once again be smaller than the old. It was difficult four years ago to select the furniture and collected knick-knacks that would move with her from a house whose three bedroom closets and two car garage were packed with possessions.  Some items were treasured mementos; others were just worth too much to throw away -- which to someone like her raised in the Depression often meant over five dollars.

We made it through the down-sizing and Mother rapidly accommodated to the comfortable new space that held her artist’s studio on the enclosed balcony; her computer and sewing machine and bookshelves in the spare bedroom; her Hummel collection on her favorite maple hutch in the living/dining room; her baking and cooking and eating and serving pieces in the kitchen; and her beautiful oil paintings on all the walls.

Too rapidly her mobility declined.  First came the cane. Then the light walker.  Then she gave up her driver’s license and sold her car. After that the walker with the seat on it became a fixture.  She started falling.  Black eyes, broken noses, arm and body bruises became too frequent.  Far too often I heard the heart-rending lament, “I’d be better off dead. It would be easier on you.” Lengthy emergency room visits most often ended with her going home; but a few times she went to a rehab center.

“My inner ears are dead. There’s nothing they can do about it,” she explained to each new physical therapist.

My heart sank at the next crisis. She called me in panicky tears the first morning after she returned from a stay in rehab. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I need help. I need to move to assisted living.”

So we began the next phase, weeks characterized by consideration, conflict and compromise.

“Do you want to take all these books?” I asked as I pulled boxes of paperbacks novels and hard cover large print books out from under her bed. “There are a lot more in the shelves of the entertainment center in the living room, too.” We put them on the floor in the living room “for the time being”, a phrase she used often, as if through some divine intervention she might regain strength and vitality and be interested in and able to rapidly perform triage on her personal possessions and easily identify what to keep; what to give away to family and friends; and what to donate or throw away.

It was difficult.  Mother is a woman of many interests and talents. She has collected friends who line her display shelf with as many as 30 birthday cards each year. She also collected items she might be able to use sometime and bargains that were too good to resist.  Letting go of some of this was easy; but even considering getting rid of other things was tantamount to asking her to cut loose part of her identity.

“You have stacks of new canvases, Mom. And so many brushes and paints.  And what are you going to do with all those picture frames?”  Her arthritic hands made it difficult for her to hold a brush firmly and steadily to create the detailed and delicate paintings she’d produced so beautifully in the past.

“I’m still going to paint.”

“Okay, let’s keep some small canvases and frames. You’ll have to pick out the brushes you want and also tubes of oil paints.”

“I want to keep some of the bigger ones and the bigger frames in my storage area for the time being.” That was the familiar signal that we’d reached the emotional “too hard to do” point and I had to ease off.

“I’ll be painting flowers on note cards and envelopes.”

“Okay, I’ll put all the blank cards and envelopes in one box. You have to pick out the bottles of craft paints you want to take with you.”

“Give the rest to a school for their art classes,” she directed.

Knitting was a productive pleasure that had become a slow and laborious, but personally necessary task. “I have to make the afghan I promised Barbara and I’ll need my yarn and knitting needles.”’

“You can take any yarn that will fit in the wicker knitting basket. I’ll take the two plastic tubs of yarn to my house. Whenever you need yarn, I’ll bring you what you want.”  She was mollified.

Sometimes she’d explode under the pressure of the discarding process.

“What do you want to do with this? Do you need it?”

“I want that!” she shot back in anger, her head nodding emphatically so her gray-streaked curls bounced.  ”You find it so easy to get rid of my things!  How different would it be if you had to get rid of your own stuff?”

I knew her anger was not directed at me but at having to rid herself of what she’d proudly accumulated, and especially at the personal feebleness that caused this shedding process and this move.

She disposed of over half her wardrobe: the pants and blouses and dresses that didn’t fit were the easiest to let go. But I didn’t have the heart to ask more than once if she still needed three winter weight jackets here in Florida when any unseasonably cool weather keeps the elderly like her indoors. They moved with her.

The move is over. Again Mother has accommodated.  She’s accumulated some new things.  She’s got a new shower curtain, a new valance over her living room window, a new phone and answering machine, and a flat-screen monitor for her computer that takes up less space than the old CRT-tube monitor. She has new friends and acquaintances. She has new assistance with daily life.

We moved the possessions she needed.  And we moved the identity she wanted to keep. The board games and card shuffler that spent the last four years untouched in the bottom of the hutch are there still. The sewing machine is stuffed in the back of a cubbyhole area next to the small sink. The sewing fabric, which we managed to get down to less than 30 yards, resides in the lowest drawer of a chest.

The crock pot is on top of the sewing machine.  Mother has three meals a day in assisted living, with no need to cook. But the crock pot had to move with her and is now stacked on top of the sewing machine box.  She dug her heels in on getting rid of the sealed bag of instant mashed potatoes. So that pouch as well as other canned goods and foodstuffs she personally packed made it over to the floor and bottom shelf of her utility closet. As did the jellies and breads and miscellaneous other items in her small, crammed refrigerator.

Mother doesn’t hear so well and she walks with difficulty. Her two walkers will soon be joined by a wheelchair. But she is surrounded by the possessions that give evidence of what she has been and who she has become. We succeeded: her identity is intact. Her wonderful paintings once again adorn the walls of her apartment. And one large bookcase stands by the entryway, filled with the photo albums of her travels.

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