The last 12 months have been hard. Everything normal kinda stopped the moment Peter's Dad had a fall at home in the middle of the night. He was rushed to hospital and never went home again. He was in hospital for two months, then awkward and difficult conversations had to be had. He could no longer walk. His house layout was not adequate for someone who needed high level support. He would need to go into aged care, aka Peter's Dad's worst nightmare.
Thus began months of administrative nightmares, dealing with aged care providers, banks, lawyers and Centrelink as Peter tried to chase the documents needed or fill in the right forms. A financial adviser was hired, as was a real estate agent and another lawyer. Some things became easier, while others became more complex. The reality is that none of these systems are easy to navigate, but coupled with people providing incorrect information, not answering emails or returning phone calls, it tips into overwhelming. Trying to navigate his Dad's life admin became a full time job for Peter. All this was made more difficult as his Dad lives four hours away in regional Victoria, being an only child while his Mum died six years ago. Being a casual employee, Peter has hardly worked in the last year, which means he doesn't get paid.
In the last four months we've been dealing with the house. It needed to be sold to supply the aged care provider with an astronomical refundable financial deposit. We soon realised that what a task this would be. Luckily the estate agent suggested selling the house without any cosmetic renovations, apart from a new oven. But we'd need to tidy things up for the photos and inspections. Astonishingly, it sold within 2 weeks over the Christmas peiod. We asked for a 90 day settlement, to get the rest of the admin sorted (including a missing house title, and to clear out 35 years of his parent's lives).
It becomes quite unimaginable seeing how much can be stored in a suburban three bedroom home, with a massive garage and three small sheds. Plus a lot of piles along the back fence of things like wood, bricks, corrigated iron etc. We soon realised that when Peter's Mum had died, the only items of hers removed at the time were her clothes (to op shops) and some personal items (which Peter kept). We both took weeks off work to go through the sum of Peter's parent's lives. We had hoped to have a house contents auction, but the local person who did this had ceased business. With a short timeline brought on by the hasty sale, we had three options: keep, donate, dispose. It took three skips, countless trips to various op shops, hiring storage to give us additional time to move items to where we live, multiple trips to the tip/transfer station, gifting items to neighbours, donations to the local Men's Shed and Friends of the Library group and support from Peter's Dad's friends. They say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes one to look after someone who has gone into aged care!
I chatted to a friend at work who had cleared out her Mum's home interstate when she died last year. There was a look of understanding on her face. 'No one understands how difficult it is to deal with your parent's things, until they've had to do it themselves'. I quoted this to another friend as we discussed his experience of clearing his Mum's estate overseas on his own. She'd gone into care and, like us, there were decades of items to sort through. He said how odd he felt having a yard sale and laying his Mum's belongings in the driveway for people to look through. He was selling them at op shop prices, 20 cents to a few dollars. His Mum was thrilled with the couple of thousand dollars made. But he felt saddened by seeing a life laid out in a driveway for sale. Was this the sum of someone's life?
As Peter and I sorted through items, we chatted about the odd things his folks had held on to. Objects which had lost the sentimental reason for being kept eg. bus tickets. Or stuff you hang on to as you feel you should eg. tax returns from the last 50 years. Or even why you have 5 boxes of tissues in your home (two unopened), multiple bottles of the same cleaning product or more glad wrap than you couple poke a stick at. Each time we return home, we look at our own belongings through new eyes. Peter and I are both sentimental. We have an archive of things, places we visits, gigs, exhibitions and plays attended etc. But I've also been carrying things with me for years. A tennis racquet my first boyfriend gave me (in my late teens - used once or twice), a boogie board I bought and loved in my 20s (unused for over 20 years). I laugh at these now. I am no longer that person, nor am I the person who is likely to use either of them any time soon. But they have moved with me for decades. Somehow part of my life story, so continue on the journey each time I move.
A friend who is in the process of seperating from her partner of 25 years, said they dreamt of simply walking away from all their stuff and starting from scratch. This would be easier than going through a garage and house full of belongings together, deciding who gets what. They wanted to lighten their load.
Looking at our home now, we are planning to declutter. Not in a Marie Kondo kind of way. Nor in a Swedish death cleaning vibe either. But clearing two lives worth of other people's stuff has made us reassess what we have. Those things we mean to do (take the mystery box of cables to e-waste recycling, for example), sell or donate items...we're going to do them. Some stuff is important. We attach great sentiment to things we own and love. What we don't need is to be weighed down by our own history. We need to make time to sort though items, organise important documents, reimagine our small home through new eyes and delight in some of the beuatiful things we currently have and are about to inherit. Our lives are more than a bunch of things laid out in a driveway for sale. Done right, the things we surround ourselves with tell our stories, and create happy environments for us to live in. The sweet spot is learning to lighten the load along the way.
Comments