We are very sorry to hear of Dr. T_____'s passing. He was a member of the ACS for 63 years. We will cancel his membership and magazine immediately. Please allow 2-3 weeks for the mailings to stop.Usually I just toss his mail but the Chemical & Engineering News comes every week and so finally I dealt with it.
Sixty three years is a long time. I also tossed an invitation to renew membership in the National Geographic Society, of which he'd been a member since 1935.
Always: More stuff. Storage units full, and more on the way once my mother gets moving.
She already dispensed with the piano. No one expected that my son would be upset about that. I was sentimental because it was my paternal grandparents' piano, left at their house by friends sometime in the 1930s who never came back for it. It was a Packard upright, constructed in 1902. Out of tune, but had a nice rich tone. In the 1970s they moved and sent it to our house, and it stayed with Mom until last week. My son wanted "Grandma's piano" but she didn't think to ask him, and neither did I.
How to get rid of stuff? Pretty soon, I'll start calling charities. St. Vincent de Paul, perhaps. Plus various Burning Man-related arts projects are doing fundraising and are on the lookout for donated objects. Shouldn't be hard to get rid of the bulk items.
They each take a piece of me with them, but one gets used to that.
4 comments:
I have no feeling for most things in my parents' house with a few major exceptions. One is a weird orange "splattery" vase that Sharon wants. It's very tall and probably very breaky... I haz no idea what to do with it, how to keep it for her. Guess I will just stick it in a corner of my apt and hope for the best. The other is a wooden bench that my momsy made for me. It looks plain, but I've always had it and I want to keep it. It's a low, open thing that you'd put under a window or sumpin. Problem is that it's horrendously heavy and I can't move it to the car or get it up my stairs. Argh.
Sad for you, D. Too bad about the piano.
What gekko said.
Your dad, like my grandfather, was a member of ACS for longer than you or I've been alive. And I still get mail from Wharton for my dad although they know he died 7 years ago.
I'm now the family repository for generations of farmers who never threw anything away. My poor kids.
"I have no feeling for most things in my parents' house..."
I'm just the opposite. How can I give up the chestnut settle my great grandfather built from a tree cut on his farm at Doe Run? Or the tall case clock a great-great-grandfather bought back from the estate auction of his own grandfather? There is too too much.
Ack! How can you get rid of those last items? I couldn't do it. Do either of your sons want them? Keep them in storage for when they have homes of their own, something, but don't chuck such family history!
Sorry. Do what you must. I just know that I couldn't.
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