Mom's Decided to Move to a smaller place.

Okay, not unusual words.  Words spoken lots of times. There are so many people that transition every single day from their parent's their children, their friends.  It was not unexpected and Mom had joked and talked about it for years.

It is one thing to hear it.  It is another to really have to deal with it.  Lots and lots of emotions involved.  Lots of loss, lots of gain. Lots and lots and lots.  A life time of lots.

It is a reliving and re-letting go of everything that has been your life.  As drawers are opened and cleared of the assorted stuff that accumulates there is the picture, the small vase, the gloves from another point in time.  If feels like being drug along a zip line, slamming into a tree and starting again or backing up or zooming to the side.  It is an emotional mine field.

Mom and Dad were only in the Eugene house for 15 years.  Most of the stuff in the house is new to me.  Most was purchased after I left the next.  I don't have a lot of attachment to many of the things but still there is something about the Parental Stuff.  It is imbued with special magic. 

Mom's lamp, Grandma's table, Dad's change box.  Bits of history and juju are there.  Everyone has different memories about different things.  It is really interesting to learn what is important to everyone and why.  Alex loves the art.  David loves the Michigan Furniture, Belle is enamoured with a library table and the Hoosier.  I want the round table where we did puzzles.  Some of these things are more relevant than others.  I had no idea David loved the furniture.  Every single bit of it.  Belle is a bit more practical because of her ongoing and continuing transitions.  

None of us need anything.  We are living in full houses with all of our accumulated "stuff".  We all face the downsizing of our lives in the near future but there is still something, something about all of it.   I think part of the wanting of the "stuff" is the idea that having rescued the treasures, even the mundane stuff, it is not a real thing.  An era is not coming to an end.  We are not getting old and we are not facing our own mortality.  Life is not changing and transitioning.   We still have a place we can come to visit and revert to our 14 year old selves.  

Tomorrow Mom has her total hip replacement.  There is nothing to tell she won't do well, figure out how to get in and out bed and be able to come home to totally recover.  We will start the process of packing the stuff she is taking to her new place and then begin the systematic process of sorting and ridding the house of it's remaining contents. 

It is a process but I have lots of experience with process and so do the other mamebers of this family.  

That is how it feels today.