Finally Somethings Clean

Finally something in this house is clean. The bathroom is clean, mom's bathroom is cleaner, the kitchen floor got mopped, and things were taken off the dinning room table. I didn't know that toilet bowl cleaner would clean the tub better than anything else. I just hope it doesn't cause cancer or something else. It only took me four months to finally get my dresser dusted. Now my office looks like a hurricane hit it and it's tax time.

Four months of feeling terrible about my mother's death and having to do all the legal work has taken a toll. It's hard to close out someone's life. When its someone you've known all your life its especially hard. Stopping all the utility bills, going through the mail daily, sorting through her belongings, plus a couple of dozen other things, it gets to you.

Some days I would cry a lot. Some days I would only cry when I went into her room. Some days I would only cry when I made dinner and remembered how many meals I'd made for her that she wouldn't eat. I keep telling her I'm sorry for not being able to stop her from dying, for not knowing when that would be and being there with her, for not being able to make her happy, for not knowing how bad the hospital would screw up and give her a medication that would stop her breathing.

I could finally go into her bathroom and clean out the medicine cabinet and a small tan colored plastic shelf on wheels where we kept things she needed daily. I put all the things I'd never use in a paper sack and gave them to someone else. There were all of her manicure items, Paul Mitchel hair products, Avon skin care things, cleansers that she would never use. The half used things went in the trash. I made it through without crying. Well, not too much.

What do I do with her doll she had from childhood? The books she like to read, her radio, the art work, her mother's old trunk? The flag that was over my dad's casket, her greeting cards, her dominoes, her soft blankets? So many decisions. Sad ones too. The sewing machine she used to sew me clothes, the child's desk, the Raggedy Andy and Raggedy Ann Dolls, the afghans she spent months crocheting? What do I do with it all? It feels overwhelming sometimes.

Mom's sewing machine:

Child's school desk:

Mom's childhood doll:

Mom's 95 year old books:

Someone gave her this purse when she went on a mission trip to Mexico. She couldn't figure out how she got across the border with it.

Her Pillsbury Dough Boy:

The wood rocker for dolls:

Her house was so cute and now it belongs to someone else.

It's just part of the mourning process to wonder how a life can be so full one minute and then...