Yes, I know it's just an online horoscope, but sometimes it says just the right thing at the right time:
Your horoscope for June 30, 2010
Your mind is more receptive than usual to messages from the other planes, Megan, and so you could find yourself feeling especially insightful right now. You might be more able than usual to tune into the thoughts and feelings of others, and you could be more attuned than usual to learning about your own motivations. Don't fight this tendency. Write down your thoughts. Even if you don't understand them now, they might mean more to you later.
Hmmm.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Enough about Stuff
It's time to move on with life and learn some new lessons. A couple of years ago, some Buddhist monks visited our area. The local papers ran a couple of stories about their activities while they were here. With the help of the public, they created an elaborate, beautiful sand painting. On the last day they were here, they destroyed the painting. The lesson they were teaching is that everything is fleeting. What I derived from this is that we should not cling to the physical. Life and beauty is to be enjoyed while it is here, but not to hold us back from moving on. What really matters is the spiritual, the soul, the spirit.
While this is easier for me to practice when I think about stuff, furniture, art, houses, property, there are other areas that are more challenging. One of the things I'm working on is enjoying the moment and not thinking too much about how I got here and what lies ahead. I think the hardest part of this lesson to learn involves my children. I can start weeping when I see pictures or think about my little children, babies, who are no longer little or babies. I have to learn to let that go and enjoy the beautiful young people they have become. We need to love them while we have them and let them go when it is time.
This is also true of others in our lives and our dear pets. We need to love them and treat them well while we have them and let them go when the time comes. And have faith that this physical life is not the end, but only a stage in our existence.
While this is easier for me to practice when I think about stuff, furniture, art, houses, property, there are other areas that are more challenging. One of the things I'm working on is enjoying the moment and not thinking too much about how I got here and what lies ahead. I think the hardest part of this lesson to learn involves my children. I can start weeping when I see pictures or think about my little children, babies, who are no longer little or babies. I have to learn to let that go and enjoy the beautiful young people they have become. We need to love them while we have them and let them go when it is time.
This is also true of others in our lives and our dear pets. We need to love them and treat them well while we have them and let them go when the time comes. And have faith that this physical life is not the end, but only a stage in our existence.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Practice
You might think that all of that would have been enough to teach me about the value of stuff. The Universe, however, thought I needed a little independent practice. By 2007, the situation in the household was becoming unbearable. Jean was a depressed narcissist with dementia, my husband was battling depression and my daughter had been diagnosed bi-polar in 2004, her sophomore year in high school. Jean was an unpredictable tyrant. You never know when pulling in the driveway what you would find.
You may be asking why we didn't get help. It was not for lack of trying. Jean was wily and evaded diagnosis. Her doctor was no help, the local mental health system was no help, the police dutifully wrote incident reports, but, in the end were no help. My sister was unable to help, my mother's best friend was unable to help.
We were in this alone. In fact, I felt like I was screaming in a dark room and no one could hear me.
The only help I did have was that of my friends. While I lost my oldest and dearest friend to breast cancer in 2004, I had Ginny, my friend since the seventh grade. She was the only one who really understood what I was going through.
We couldn't live there anymore. Jean was making our lives miserable and it was becoming unbearable. We decided to move. My husband cashed in an old 401K he had and we found a house on Nottingham in Penn Beach. Linda was our landlady and she was our angel that helped us on this particular leg of our journey. Linda was a hairdresser and I felt that maybe Erin, my friend whom I had lost who was also a hairdresser, brought us together to help each other out. Linda was unable to sell her house and decided to rent it to us after we contacted her real estate agent. Renting with three older kids, two dogs, and, at the last minute, a litter of kittens is easier said than done. Linda didn't even blink. She also had kids, dogs and cats and welcomed us. So we moved.
One large truck and 3 movers later we were safe and happy. We had some furniture, but not much. I filled in by shopping at yard sales. It was fun and our little house looked good by the time we were done. The kids had their own rooms, the dogs had a yard, we kept two of the cats and had a wonderful neighbor. Somebody was watching out for us.
One year to the week, Jean fell in the back yard and hit her head. She walked into the hospital but never walked out. We moved back with two truck loads this time and two years later are still working on things, but happy with a minimal amount of stuff and always working to make due with less.
That said, I still frequent yard sales, but buy only what we need, or what I simply can't live without, an example of which you can see in the picture that accompanies today's post.
Monday, June 28, 2010
It's Just Stuff: Part Two (Where things get ugly)
We moved to my mother's in July of '03. If you remember, it was a hot and humid summer. My mother didn't have air conditioning. My mother would not let us install an air conditioner on the first floor. Things went badly.
Let me explain our living arrangements. The house is a large one. The upstairs was originally finished off so that my grandmother could live there. She never did, unable to navigate the stairs safely and refusing to live "in somebody's attic." The space consists of a large living room with windows facing the river, and a bedroom off the living room. There was a closet which was planned to be a bathroom, but never completed. Installing the bathroom I will save for another post. When we moved in, we needed to finish off an upstairs storage room for the boys to use as a bedroom. This upstairs area was the reason we thought we could make this work; we would have our own comfortable living area and only Anna would be on the first floor in her own bedroom.
The first step was to clean out the storage room. Let me say my mother had not even been in the upstairs since my dad had died and this storage room was mostly full of discarded household items and assorted and varied pieces of junk. There was yet another storage room up there that held stuff from her antique business and family memorabilia. That room was left untouched.
While my mother wanted us to move in, she did not want to make room for us. Every old toaster and lamp was a battle. I have this memory of her sitting on the front porch weeping over a shoe. We got the room clear and thought the worst was over. We were wrong.
After a few months I realized my mother could not be dealt with rationally. She had undiagnosed dementia and was a raging narcissist to begin with. You might be thinking, "Then why did you move in with her?" Well, I'm still working on that. There was only my sister and I to care for her. She and my sister never got along and I was the "golden child." My mother and I had always gotten along and I didn't think things would be any different when we moved in. I was wrong.
I want to write that the stuff was always at the heart of the battles, but the real battle was about control. She wanted all the control, all the time. We thought that because we left the first floor untouched she would realize that we had to have room to live and let us do so. Again, wrong.
While I will be posting more about this adventure at a later date, let me just sum up what my mother taught me about stuff. People and relationships are more important than stuff. Stuff is just stuff, it can't love you or keep you company or help you grow. It's just stuff. It can be replaced, done without, or kept and cared for, but it will never replace people and relationships. She built a wall with her stuff. I chose to do without stuff and chose people, love and growth.
Let me explain our living arrangements. The house is a large one. The upstairs was originally finished off so that my grandmother could live there. She never did, unable to navigate the stairs safely and refusing to live "in somebody's attic." The space consists of a large living room with windows facing the river, and a bedroom off the living room. There was a closet which was planned to be a bathroom, but never completed. Installing the bathroom I will save for another post. When we moved in, we needed to finish off an upstairs storage room for the boys to use as a bedroom. This upstairs area was the reason we thought we could make this work; we would have our own comfortable living area and only Anna would be on the first floor in her own bedroom.
The first step was to clean out the storage room. Let me say my mother had not even been in the upstairs since my dad had died and this storage room was mostly full of discarded household items and assorted and varied pieces of junk. There was yet another storage room up there that held stuff from her antique business and family memorabilia. That room was left untouched.
While my mother wanted us to move in, she did not want to make room for us. Every old toaster and lamp was a battle. I have this memory of her sitting on the front porch weeping over a shoe. We got the room clear and thought the worst was over. We were wrong.
After a few months I realized my mother could not be dealt with rationally. She had undiagnosed dementia and was a raging narcissist to begin with. You might be thinking, "Then why did you move in with her?" Well, I'm still working on that. There was only my sister and I to care for her. She and my sister never got along and I was the "golden child." My mother and I had always gotten along and I didn't think things would be any different when we moved in. I was wrong.
I want to write that the stuff was always at the heart of the battles, but the real battle was about control. She wanted all the control, all the time. We thought that because we left the first floor untouched she would realize that we had to have room to live and let us do so. Again, wrong.
While I will be posting more about this adventure at a later date, let me just sum up what my mother taught me about stuff. People and relationships are more important than stuff. Stuff is just stuff, it can't love you or keep you company or help you grow. It's just stuff. It can be replaced, done without, or kept and cared for, but it will never replace people and relationships. She built a wall with her stuff. I chose to do without stuff and chose people, love and growth.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
It's Just Stuff: Part One
This is one lesson that the last few years have taught me. It began with leaving our house in Elmer. We had lived there fifteen years, had our three children there, and loved it. The house had a large attic, a basement and an outbuilding. That allowed me to keep all the clothes and toys and what-not that can collect with kids. In addition, relatives looked at it as a dumping ground as they cleaned out their own messes. We were too young and too polite to say no. It's just stuff, right? We had room to cram it in. So we did.
In July of 2002 my dad passed away. That left my mother, then 83, in Pennsville alone in a big house. In April of 2003, we put our house in Elmer up for sale and the clean-out began. At first our end of the clean-out was rather easy. We took what we needed to my mother's house and left the rest to clean out later. This happened a little at a time on weekends. It seemed at times like the stuff multiplied while we weren't there. There was still a basement, attic and building full of stuff.
In February of 2004 our house sold. We went back one weekend to spend the night and have a yard sale. It was one of the most emotional times of my life. Processing all those memories and saying goodbye to a house we loved was devastating. The worst part was we still had stuff to get rid of. This is where God intervened.
The real estate agent for the people who were buying our house was also a pastor. He had his youth group come in for two days and clean out every last thing from the property. We provided a dumpster and they took what was good for fund raising. While the buyers were absolute pains in the ass from beginning to end, their agent proved to be our angel.
And that was part one of the lesson I learned about stuff: the physical and emotional burden that having too much stuff can be. The next part of my story will be about what my mother taught me about stuff.
In July of 2002 my dad passed away. That left my mother, then 83, in Pennsville alone in a big house. In April of 2003, we put our house in Elmer up for sale and the clean-out began. At first our end of the clean-out was rather easy. We took what we needed to my mother's house and left the rest to clean out later. This happened a little at a time on weekends. It seemed at times like the stuff multiplied while we weren't there. There was still a basement, attic and building full of stuff.
In February of 2004 our house sold. We went back one weekend to spend the night and have a yard sale. It was one of the most emotional times of my life. Processing all those memories and saying goodbye to a house we loved was devastating. The worst part was we still had stuff to get rid of. This is where God intervened.
The real estate agent for the people who were buying our house was also a pastor. He had his youth group come in for two days and clean out every last thing from the property. We provided a dumpster and they took what was good for fund raising. While the buyers were absolute pains in the ass from beginning to end, their agent proved to be our angel.
And that was part one of the lesson I learned about stuff: the physical and emotional burden that having too much stuff can be. The next part of my story will be about what my mother taught me about stuff.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Update
My last post was almost three years ago. I didn't think this blog would still be here, but I happened across it. Who knew?
So much happened in those three years. My mother fell in June of '08, hit her head and was dead within a week. So we left our hideaway nest on Nottingham and moved back to North River Drive. My sister and I hired an auction house to take away all of her stuff. The day they arrived I was in the hospital awaiting emergency gall bladder surgery. While I avoided having to be here on the big day, I also lost a few things I would have liked to hang onto. It is, however, only stuff. This left us with an empty house that we had painted and moved into to make our own.
I'll update and fill in the blanks in coming posts. Briefly, however, George opened his own printing shop, Anna is working at WaWa and doing well, Conor just graduated from high school and Sean will be a high school freshman this year.
Life is good and we are all moving on.
So much happened in those three years. My mother fell in June of '08, hit her head and was dead within a week. So we left our hideaway nest on Nottingham and moved back to North River Drive. My sister and I hired an auction house to take away all of her stuff. The day they arrived I was in the hospital awaiting emergency gall bladder surgery. While I avoided having to be here on the big day, I also lost a few things I would have liked to hang onto. It is, however, only stuff. This left us with an empty house that we had painted and moved into to make our own.
I'll update and fill in the blanks in coming posts. Briefly, however, George opened his own printing shop, Anna is working at WaWa and doing well, Conor just graduated from high school and Sean will be a high school freshman this year.
Life is good and we are all moving on.
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