More letting go

The estate sale went well. Still, so much stuff remained, especially furniture and clothing.

Normally, Jan (who did our estate sale) would determine with us a plan to unload the items still left. That could be auction or donation or whatever. And then she and her crew would clean the house and get it ready for sale, because the house goes on the market today.

Instead, Dorsey and I decided we would do a garage sale at our house. We had already planned to have one ourselves, because we have figured that when Dorsey gets a new job, it will not be in Amarillo.

So Monday and Tuesday, I cleaned out the rest of Mom and Dad's house. Jan had already done the hardest part of sifting through and organizing. I really just packed and boxed things up to get them ready for our sale. My mom really liked dishes and serving platters ...

I hadn't really expected the task would be so emotionally daunting, but it was.  The first day, I came home and spent the rest of the night in a stupor on the couch. The second day wasn't much different.

Our housekeeper, Anabel, cleaned the house to ready it for sale. Anabel has cleaned our house and my parents' for several years. She started cleaning for Mom and Dad after Mom had her first stroke in 2013. When Anabel walked into the house, she said in her timid English, "Smells like Nicki," and she smiled broadly.

While sorting through my parents' things, I thought about the things left over. These were once special and/or important items to my mom. Or, they were things she had kept from both sides of the family when relatives had died. I wondered how much of the things left were something she would sell in a garage sale. I found myself wondering frequently why certain things hadn't sold. In fact, a few things were left behind that I took home myself ... things I missed the first time. Maybe that's why some were left.

Going through the clothes to donate to the Downtown Women's Center was without a doubt the most difficult experience. Both of my parents took great pride in their clothing. After Dad retired from coaching, he became quite a sharp-dressed man. He had his style, and it was all Dad. On the other hand, clothes to my mom had always been important. I remember reading a series of letters she wrote to her parents when she was away at college. She talked about all sorts of stuff, of course, but "cute clothes" were included in her writings. I remember my mom reading the letters again and saying, "I can't believe how shallow I was!" But we laughed.

I found myself carefully and gently boxing and bagging up their clothes. I was struck by how, when I've donated my own clothing in the past, I just hurriedly tossed them into bags, and that was that. I could not do that with my parents' clothes. The majority were dry-cleaned and perfectly pressed. I wound up packing 15 bags and seven boxes of clothes. And I decided right then and there I would go through my own things once a year to weed them out! That was just way too many clothes!!

I noticed how all of my mother's clothes were "teachery," because she was a teacher/librarian. She had so many holiday-related sweaters! I recognized many of the things she wore and thought, "I remember that!" I pictured her getting ready for school every morning.

It was no different with Dad. Our cowboy. Boots, jeans, hats, shirts, slacks, golf shirts ... All of it quite expensive.

I felt sad to let it all go. It was as if I were having to let go of them ... a huge part of them and their personalities. I told my sister that I hoped whomever would be getting these clothes took good care of them and appreciated them. I've never thought that about my own donated clothes.

While painful, this process was necessary for my own grieving. I think it was a significant task in the letting go process. But as I have thought for some time now, I know my grieving will never completely end. I will just learn begrudgingly how to live with it. I know I will never stop being that little girl inside who wants and needs her parents. A part of me will always think, "This isn't how it was supposed to be."

So here I am again ... gathering things from our house for the giant sale, which will be next Saturday, Feb. 20.  It will be more letting go, both literally and symbolically.

But really ... it was never supposed to be this way ...