Life After Mother: Five Winters

Summer’s gone, winter’s coming on, the holiday season is underway, and 2024 begins in a few weeks. Winter brings not only the holidays but also time to evaluate what’s been accomplished (or not) in recent months and to set goals for next year. 

Lately, I’ve been looking at family holiday photos and separating memories from the present. Holiday season is not, for me, a time to honor family traditions — my family was not one with strong traditions, and happy memories are mixed with dysfunctional horrors. Relatives are in another state, and gifts and cards and invitations are rare. I’ve grown comfortable with the holidays being a time of solitude, of finding personal peace. At the same time, the holidays are a time to reach out, build bridges, and strengthen relationships. Knowing that, what I’m doing for the holidays is easily scheduled, and I can look past these last few weeks of 2023.    

I began this year hoping to take a few days or weeks for travel, but that didn’t happen, primarily because much of my time was spent navigating a dreary frustrating chain of dental visits and procedures, with the accompanying bills and insurance hassles. I can expect my dental issues to continue into next year, so I’ll have to build my schedule around tending to personal matters, whether expected or unexpected.

In between those personal matters I’ll have to, again, go through the house, room by room, closet by closet, and do whatever’s necessary to move out whatever unwanted or unneeded possessions remain. At this stage, the most obvious trash has been trashed, the most obvious donations donated, the most obvious giveaways given away, the most obvious recyclables recycled, and the things that are easiest to sell have been sold. I’ve held two estate sales and a garage sale but those didn’t clear out as much as I expected. Some artwork and antiques I’m still hoping to find a buyer for. I’ve filled dozens of bags for charity, and I can still find enough donations to fill some more bags. Some things still need to just find someone to haul them away, or just take them. 

I’ve now lived alone in my family home for nearly five years, and the home was built for a nuclear family of modest means, not intended to be a multi-generational homestead filled with photos and memories. Things that may have seemed important five years ago aren’t so important anymore. To move out, I have to move on.