I have been working on my mother’s house. Today’s job was “the boys” room; “the boys” are my brother and me, when we were growing up. There is a lot of work to be done. My mother has decided that she is getting older. She is in her 80s and wants to make sure the house is ready to sell once she is gone.
But really, she has a good 10-15 years left; her mom died when she was 98. The real reason is that she would like to move in with my sister who she has been taking care of on weekends for a number of years now. She drives an hour each way and then moves my sister to and from her wheelchair, into the bathroom, in and out of bed, and feeds and dresses her. Mom has a lot of energy but she worries about my sister during the week. Even though sis has personal care attendants, mom would still like to know everything is okay.
I’m not in a rush to get her out; she has been here a long time. The woman I bought my house from had lived there for 50 years. Her husband had died the year before and the children decided that she couldn’t manage it alone. I found out later that she was very unhappy after she moved; she misses the house badly.
Similarly the woman in the house next door lived there 54 years. I got to know her a bit before she left; or really, her children moved her too for the same reason. Her husband died at Christmas, they had her out by the end of the following summer. And she has been unhappy ever since too.
Because I’ve been doing the work at my mother’s house it has given me a chance to think about it. Do they miss their homes? Or is it all the memories they have of being there? They have a lot of memories built up over 50 years.
I know because each time I work on part of the house it brings them up for me. Today I was working on my bedroom. The rug is all frayed and may have to come out. I’m not surprised, it was installed 40 years ago and even though it still looks good it is falling apart. The pad underneath is mostly dust. But I have a lot of memories in here, reading and playing with friends. During the 1960s I had black light posters, black lights, and grave stone rubbings all around the room when I was in my dark period. Would this be called “Goth” now?
Each time I do some work in the den I remember how my dad and I converted the garage into it. It happened when I was about 13 and the big memory I have is knocking a hole in the back wall when my dad was at work. I knew that was about the spot he wanted to put in a sliding glass door. I had never measured and planned; I just got moving. When he got home he was a little shocked but he set about fixing my shoddy workmanship. He cleared the hole, sized it to the door, and patched the rest.
We also… I could keep going and talk about everything we did in the basement and the porch we added on the other side of the house, etc, etc but this is about my mother. She has a lot of memories, 50 years of them, just like the other women. She watched her kids grow up here, one daughter got married here, her husband died here. The way I look at it, her mother lived in her last home for almost 40 years. The difference is that she lived with her son and his family; my mom is alone and the house is big.
I don’t want to be like the kids who moved their mothers out. I want her to stay as long as she wants. Would she miss the house? Absolutely. Does she have a lot of memories? Positively. As far as I’m concerned she will leave when she is ready and I’ll support her decision whatever it is.
So I continue to work on her home…
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