Last Sunday, Spouse and I visited my Mother at her apartment. She wanted to give me keys to the place so I could check her mail while she is in the hospital. She also wanted to show me insurance papers and a list of people to contact in the event the surgery does not go well. It is a real possibility. The surgeon calls her a "high risk" patient, despite the fact she looks about twenty or thirty years younger than her actual age.
Anyway, my surviving aunt was there. Mother's younger sister. We had a nice chat and talked about all kinds of things for nearly two hours. Then Spouse and I had to get home. Before we left, a thought occured to me and I asked my aunt if she had any pictures of The Old House. I didn't figure she had, but when Aunt Cile died, (Mother's older sister), Laurie inherited Cile's entire collection of pictures. This would have been a considerable inheritance as Cile loved to travel and loved to take pictures. Cile was bound to have had lots of pictures of The Old House.
To my dismay, Laurie not only said she didn't have any, but that she had thrown away most of Cile's pictures. She didn't recognize the people and just tossed them.
I didn't react. I'm low on the family's totem pole of importance, so I just smiled and said, "Oh."
Why is it that the people who don't give a d*mn are the ones to inherit the most precious things? Take the d*mn hutch cabinet. I don't care if it's worth $100,000. You can have it. I won't fight. But if you don't want something, why did you take it? And, having taken it, why throw it away instead of asking if someone else might want it?
The same thing happened when Daddy died. Mother knew Alfred and Daddy had been close, so she told Mickey she was giving Alfred the boat, camper, and all that kind of stuff. Mickey agreed. So what happened? Alfred gives the stuff to his sons, and they immediately sell it off.
I think our culture s*cks, and it's infecting everyone. All anyone seems to care about anymore is money. If a thing cannot help you improve your career, finances, or anything like that, it's useless. Throw it away.
We do that with people, too. I know, because a lot of those people threw me away when I became one of society's disinfranchised. I suppose the few who remain will dump me when they learn Spouse and I have lost the house. To be perfectly honest, I don't care about that anymore.
What I do care about is history. Especially history from people who are gone. People who still mean a lot to me. Cile was my favorite aunt. I was her favorite of all the nieces and nephews. We still use these cheap, plastic, pastel-colored, picnic plates for our evening meals. You know the kind? They have four compartments to keep things like jello from sliding into the mashed potatoes. They used to belong to Cile. They're mine now. I like them better than stoneware. The rest of the family was going to throw them away. I snatched them up.
Maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe I'm the one who's mixed up. I don't care about the furniture, which is what seems to occupy everyone else's thoughts. I care about stupid things, like cheap picnic plates which probably cost 50-cents brand new and still can be purchased at most dollar stores. I care about a favorite pen. I care about the movies and music which used to be important to those I love. I have a good many of Lynahr's videos. The only other thing I got of Lynahr's was the Rainbow Bible Spouse and I gave her for Christmas just two years before she died.
But pictures are so important. That's history! It's real. Those people existed. And they were important enough to have their picture taken.
I never inherit pictures. Do you know who gets them? People who throw them away.
When Grandma Amy died, she had boxes of photographs. They went to Aunt Laurie. Gone now. Laurie didn't know who they were, so they couldn't be important. Cile's pictures went to Laurie. Lynahr's pictures disappeared. I don't know who got them.
Most people are always looking to their future. I look the other way. What happened is more important to me than what is to come. I suppose that's wrong, and why I am what I am, and why family and friends would rather not have me about anymore.
Laurie is a wonderful person. She has done far more to help my mother than I have. I just wish she was a bit more sentimental. Practicality has its place. But not in pictures.
12 comments:
Bevie, I sit with head hung. After Christmas I was going through the cards we received and I was about to toss a small wallet-sized picture of a baby. My husband said, with some alarm, "What are you doing??" And I said I was tossing it. And he said, "It's a picture." I said, yeah, but we don't even care for her mother and we've never met the baby. And he just repeated that it was a picture. Period.
And now that I read your post I am thinking well, maybe we will meet the baby eventually and maybe that picture will be important to someone, sometime.
So thanks for the post! :)
You bet.
Your husband is right. Just make sure to write (in soft tip) on the back the name, date, and maybe place. That is why so many pictures are tossed. Years later nobody remembers who that was.
Spouse and I have been guilty of leaving the backs of pictures blank, too.
I agree with you wholeheartedly and am glad to see that I am not the only one who still thinks that the past is important.
Pearl
Thanks, Pearl.
The past matters. It's one way to learn about the future.
Thank you for visiting, and thank you for posting. Hope you come back.
I think it isn't so much a preference of the past or the future for me, it is the people. The Now. The dignity with which we relate to people.
Understanding the idea that someone else might want what you don't. One might not see the intrinsic value of a thing that someone else might love because of the human association that are coupled with it.
You are so right that to many people are to wrapped up the monetary values of things.
Where's the heart?
Over the next few years I think we will see a change in that, though, as times will slim down our expectations, and perhaps we will see a shift to more important things.
Like family, community, good friends. Being real, instead of being rich.
My Gramma used to say, "Use it up ware it out, make it do, or do without."
But that's not people. You keep them forever, even when they go away.
oh dear, I've thrown out pictures that people have sent that I didn't really know. maybe i'll stop.
That was shocking that precious heirlooms were given away.
I have my mothers china hutch, much smaller than they make them now-a-days, I'd love to have a new one, but I'd never give up my mothers china hutch!!
Were you kidding about 'losing the house' :-( Are you looking for a new home - please please make sure that home will include Firestar. Although I get the impression anyone willing to blog for their cat wouldn't dream of moving to place that wouldn't include the kitty.
Yes. People never really leave us. Part of them remains with us always. Every time a memory touches us it is like they have returned.
I wonder if that is what Jesus meant when he said he would be with us always. Just thinking of him brings him back to us, as it does others we love.
You may be right about current events changing our priorities. Often, that is what happens when things go really bad. It's what happened with me. I was just a little ahead of the curve this time.
I know, Lisa. It amazes me sometimes to see someone unable to look at a thing except as a curator. I have no right to condemn, for the truth is, they're not wrong. They're just not me and I'm amazed.
Spouse actually tends that way. Always wanting to sell, or give away, things which have an emotional hold over Son or I.
No. Not kidding about losing the house. The sheriff's auction is either this coming week, or the week after. If we don't win the lottery [haha] we have to be out before the end of summer.
Finding a place where we can keep Firestar may not be easy. We have to afford it, for one thing. Also, I just heard on the news that its getting harder and harder for people who've lost their house to get a place to rent. Landlords are figuring if people like us won't (notice I use the word "won't" as opposed to "can't" - that's the way we are seen by a lot of people) pay our mortgage, then how much less are we to pay rent?
We're not going to look for a new place until the school year is nearly over. It wouldn't be good to upset Son's life when there is so little time left in the school year. It will be hard enough if we leave the area without adding the complications of finishing a year at a school he barely knows.
God takes care of us. Often, he does so in ways we do not comprehend until later. I expect things will work out. I just haven't a clue as to how.
I admire your calmness in the face of all this, Bevie. I'd be a complete wreck.
Good luck to you . . .
Calmness is a benefit of being older. It isn't so much an indication of strength or character as it is an older person's desire to conserve energy.
Thank you for the well wishes.
Although it won't be easy finding a place that will take your baby, please tell me that you plan to find a place. He's your baby, one of the kids!
I hadn't realized that landlords might be reluctant to rent to those who've lost their home -what an added slap in the face.
Question, if you delay looking for a new place, won't that only further limit the choices making it harder to find a place that will include Firestar.
I volunteer at a cat shelter so I've seen first hand how heart breaking it is for the surrendered cats who once had loving homes, it makes me want to cry. Please please find a place that will include all your 'kids'.
I'm so sorry this is happening to you.
Given the housing market, it would seem more cost effective for mortgage holders to refinance morgages and make the payments affordable!
Our plan is to keep Firestar with us. Delaying a couple of months will make finding a place more difficult, but finding a place too soon is no good. We want Son to finish this school year where he began it. There is only three months remaining.
Since we lost our higher paying jobs Spouse has called the bank almost monthly trying to work something out. The response was always the same: Call us when you start missing payments.
When we started missing payments the response changed to: When you make more money than you spend we will help you.
What brilliant thinking! No wonder the banks all collapsed.
I guess I don't really mind, except we are treated as though this were some how all our fault. This was not a bad loan. When we had the house built back in 1999 we were earning nearly $100,000. Then my job disappeared. A couple of years later Spouse's job did, too. Now we earn less than $25,000. Had we known we would never have built the house.
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