Letting Go

 

 

My mother is letting go of so much now, driving, her home, most of her possessions. She recently moved into an assisted living facility and has a room about a third of the size of the home she is leaving.  My mother collected clothes, shoes, lotions and potions.  She doesn’t have much furniture.  The China and so many other things were given away after the last move when my father died and she sold their house and moved into a much smaller condo.  She has expressed no desire to go through her things leaving it up to me to decide what to move, what to discard or give away. She doesn’t own very much and recently told me, “They are only things,” a shard of her clear thinking piercing through an ocean of fog and confusion.  

 

 I prefer to live in an uncluttered home.  In my move to a new house last summer, I took the chance to discard or give away many things I had stuffed into drawers, cupboards, closets, that I no longer used or needed.  I tend to collect books and papers and hang onto clothes even when they are well past the time when I can wear them in public.  It was liberating to purge and I try to do so regularly.  In my new house, I keep a box in my closet where I put books I have read once and will likely not read again for giving away and a big plastic bag for older clothes that I bring to Goodwill when it is full.  I don’t want to accumulate what isn’t necessary. I am only taking a few things of my mother’s as keepsakes, the clay teapot I got her from my trip to China, a porcelain angel, the colorful Guatemalan crucifix.  I found my parents birth certificates and passports to keep and a note in my father’s handwriting. I know that like mother I will likely have to leave this place before I die if I live to be old enough.  This impermanence makes this house and my time here precious.

 

My mother told me she feels safe in her new home where meals are provided and there are activities she can join through the day.  Mostly, she is happy to not be so alone and to be meeting new people.  She is relieved to “not be a burden” to her friends or family.  She is teaching me so much about letting go, courage, and faith.