I began to move a couple of weeks ago, but this is an unusual type of move and so it is taking a lot longer than normal. Perhaps I should mention that I have lived in this house for 9 years and I love it here. I love the area, I love the house, and I wish I could stay.
However my mother is 99 years old. She will reach the age of 100 in less than 4 months. She is healthy. She is basically happy. But her friends have mostly all died. This is really sad for her. And she is lonely. Of course she is becoming frail as well, so she needs much more help than before. She stopped driving herself when she was 93. She has a man who drives for her and does other heavy lifting about the place. Her cook has been with her for 40 years. Mother lives in the same house she and my father bought before I was born. Now she has 24/7 caregivers and it is best if there is someone there to keep tabs on all these helpful people.
No one else in the family was able to do it. So one day I decided that in keeping with the Serenity Prayer, there is nothing I can do to ?Change? my mother and her living arrangements. However, I can change my own attitude and my place of residence. I found that I had the courage to do it. So my move to Washington DC is nearly complete. Compressing my long life into one room and some extra closets requires some very serious downsizing. My children have helped me manage this by taking most of my things off my hands. It is very flattering to know that they want my things, that they like my things and will take good care of them. When I go into one of their houses and see my favorite paintings, rugs, silver, and furniture it warms my heart. It makes me feel right at home.
Really, it is fun to see each house displaying various aspects of my personality and preferences from my vacated house/home. It is sort of like multiplying my own design ideas and seeing them mutate in marvelous ways. That part is great. What is difficult is sorting through files, going through photo albums and scrapbooks. Most of them have never been culled. Many of the boxes of files have followed me from house to house and office to office without actually being sorted in years. And so many need to be shredded, deleted, gone. But they MUST be gone through because there are actually some important documents among the detritus.
I am almost done now. After many bags of trash and trips to second hand stores, the rest is going to be carted off by others. I will be free. I will be unencumbered by things. Really only my books and a reduced amount of clothes and my 2 small dogs are going with me to Mother’s house. My computers will be reduced down to a laptop and my iPad and a bunch of flash drives! My new life calls and now I have space for it to arrive.