A picture from 2017 when Mum was a spritely 92 year old. Since Mum died in October I am working on my issue: keeping 'stuff' and attaching emotions to inanimate objects, so it was a huge step for me to part with this mirror yesterday, don't get me wrong, there are still lots to deal with from when I moved her from her flat. I go into the garage, lift up one of her ornaments from a box...then put it back Lol! Small steps...
Journalling:
Moving Mum into the Care home in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic was especially difficult and I had to choose what things to take to furnish her room. I didn’t think twice about her mirror, or her tiffany lamps or her framed embroidery or the painting of a tree I did when I was a teenager that she framed and wouldn’t part with, or the elephant ornaments or her freestanding jewellery box or the painting done by her brother. Of course by this stage she actually had no attachment to any of these things and didn’t recognise anything as belonging to her but I wanted her to remember, to realise these were her things, to not totally lose herself to dementia.
I didn’t want to let her go.
I kept the mirror in our garage store room until yesterday and decided quite suddenly that it was time for it to give joy to someone else so I dropped it off at a local charity shop where I was assured it would quickly be sold! Everything was good until I walked out the shop and then my resolve weakened but I kept walking, remembering it was just a ‘thing’ and keeping the mirror was not bringing her back to me.
26th April 2023
