Thursday 8 March 2012

Cleanliness is Next to Impossible

I've been trying to move for about 20 years.  I still live in the house I was born in.  The odd house that has never moved but has had three different addresses as the city moved out to engulf us.  Now where there were fields and trees behind my house, there are houses upon houses.  I have a very clear recollection when it started.  I was 17 and our next door neighbours of forever years had sold up and now the bit of land between the two houses was being made ready for its own house.  I remember going down to the garage, which had the only window facing in the right direction, and being horrified while I watched bulldowzers destroy the lovely pussywillows.  This became the quintesential image that stuck in my mind as all future devestation in the name of progress, and, yes, needed money, happened.  My childhood was gone and life would funtamentally never be the same again.  And it hasn't been.
Fast forward to me going to graduate school only because my wonderful parents let me live at home.  FF to my Dad's terminal heart disease that lasted 17 years when they had given him two years to live.  My mother would take care of my father and then I would take care of her, putting her to bed because she was so exhausted.  FF past my father's death 10 or 11 months to my mother's terminal cancer, pancreatic and liver, diagnosis and the 24 hour a day care so she would not have to die in the cold hospital.  I regret none of this care.  In fact it warms my heart that I was able to give back.  But after they were both gone, I clung to the house as the only source of security I had.  Now 20 years later and I have rheumatoid arthritis and find I cannot take care of such a large house with so many stairs.

But the problem is I now have 3 generations worth of stuff to get rid of.  (My grandmother's things were shipped here when she moved and then died,)  We are of Scottish ancestery and I find it very difficult to throw anything away that might be useful in the future.  Consequently I seem to move things from place to place.  The city only allows one bag of garbage per week.  How can you clean things out in only one bag?

That is probably more of an excuse than anything.  But moving m



Fast forward to me going to graduate school and only being able to afford it because my wonderful parents let me live at home.  FF