The treasures in all my mother's cr*p

I spent much of today cleaning out my mom's room in her assisted living facility and taking more stuff to her in her nursing home (including the quilt that I made her).  Keep in mind that I just cleaned out a ton of her stuff last December when I moved her to assisted living.  But today I found...knitting patterns circa 1950...little scraps of paper with mysterious messages on them...20 dirty combs...4 corroded flash lights...a lot of food-stained clothing...2 zip-lock bags with moldy home-made cookies in them...and so on...

But, also:

my parents' marriage certificate (my parents were divorced after 21 yrs of marriage, but there is something so validating about seeing this certificate, which I want to say is dated 19 mos before my birth)

my mom's military discharge papers (even though the danged VA has been of NO help to us in the past year, I'm still proud of my mom's career as a lieutenant in the Coast Guard during WWII)

a tiny silver ID tag with my mom's maiden name engraved on it

a few pieces of beautiful, fragile antique jewelry (I will try to get Mom to identify them, but she could say, "What's that?")

If you've had to do this kind of job, what treasures did you keep?

Jean

well- being a genealogist..i would keep everything except teh cookies and teh stained clothing-oh and pitch the flashlights...oh and teh dirty combs....

the patterns could maybe be sold on ebay or given to someone who does needlework???

the mementos would be awesome scanned into the computer and shared on ancestry.com or soemwhere cuz they are priceless to anyone relate dto your mother-now or in future!

bless you the task!!!!!!!!!!

Jean,

I hesitate to even get started on this one. My Mom's birthday is Oct 24, 1911. She would have been 97 this next week. About the time we will be moving into our new house which she is helping to pay for. My husband calls it the house that Grandma 1/2 built. Our little rambler was paid for and we never dreamed of building a home. . .

I have 3 storage units to move and unpack. The first and smallest contains my mom and Aunt Fae's books, photos, personal things that I couldn't part with. My mom was a writer and her most private writings she left for me to find after she passed away in April of 2007. As I was cleaning out her desk I found a hand written letter dated Father's Day 2006. It started out "Dear Daddy. . . " It was a letter written when she was 95 to the father who went away to work when she was 9 years old and never returned. Until I read that letter I didn't realize the depth of that sorrow of not knowing what happened to her dear dad. He went to work in the wheat fields near Lawrence, Kansas and was to be home by September when my grandmother was expecting her 8th child. . . They never found out what happened to him or why he didn't come home. 

The other very personal paper was the story of the illness and death of my parents' firstborn child, Max Ray. He died of tetanus when he was just 3 and 1/2 years old. Again. . . .I think those two events were just so personal that she chose to let us read about them after she was gone. I knew the basics of both stories but the raw emotion that she wrote was always kept inside.

Enough of that. Do you have pictures of your mom in uniform? What a woman she must have been to have the courage to join the military at that time. When we were in Dallas last year for our OFF gathering there was a group of WWII women pilots at the same hotel. What an amazing group of women they were. They were having a reunion. Some were in their early 80's I believe and still piloting planes!

I hope your mom can tell you about the jewelry. If she can't is their anyone else who might be able to help you?

It's like a time warp isn't it going through those things? My mom had lived in her house for 55 yrs. She wanted nothing sold so we gave it away and managed to do it without any hard feelings. The grandkids wanted things like her bulb planter, her biscuit cutter, her broom and garden hoe. We let family choose first and then shared things with her many friends and neighbors.

I have a winter's worth of things to go through when we get to the new house. My mom was the family picture taker. My older brother (12 yrs older than I) has 5 grown kids. Their mother wasn't much of a picture taker so I've promised to have a picture sorting party come next spring to distribute pictures among the grandkids. Their are plenty for everyone believe me!

Sorry I got so nostalgic here. Like Margo family treasures and stories do that to me.

Karen,

This kind of reminiscince is exactly why I posted this thread.

The story about your grandfather's disappearance is really interesting.  Who knows what really happened to him?  He could have been killed in an accident, or an epidemic.

Yes, I do have pix of my mom in uniform.  She was so young, so beautiful, so hopeful!

When I admitted Mom to the nursing home, the social worker took a detailed "social history" and noted down everything about Mom's marriage (even though it didn't work out), military service, work history, etc.  And when I took Mom for her check-up with her new doctor, his nurse asked about all that and when I told her about Mom's college career and military service, agreed with me that Mom had to be pretty smart to do everything she did during WWII (communications - coding/decoding).  Mom just beamed while listening to that.  Then forgot it 3 minutes later.

Jean

My mom does not throw anything away... when she came to live with me... the funny thing is i see towels and sheets from when i was a kid and i am fifty...  I say keep what reminds you most of your mom, the special moments...like my mom has a hairpin box that her father made.. and i have fond memories of her doing her hair from child hood to adult so thats what I want... Its a little thing but it reminds me of the best and most personal moments.
Cate 48

When my mom died it took me 5 years to get rid of her clothes.  I didn't have a problem with anything else but couldn't part with the clothes. 

Jean, this brought back so many wonderul memories. Thanks so much for allowing me to think back on them. They can be such a treat. Then other times they can make me so sad.

I got to go through most of the stuff that mom had left. Unfortunately some of the things that she treasured most had disappeared. I have the feeling that she threw some of them away when she was "cleaning" her room and would bring out bags of "garbage" to be tossed. I never thought to look at them. We just threw them out. Now if only I had known. At that time we didn't know that she was experiencing the Alzhiemers since they become such good actors and actresses. As you may know.

I found my great grandmothers wedding ring from late 1700's or early 1800's. It was a plain 20 caret gold band very wide in width. It was beautiful. I gave that to my sister since she was the oldest. I had mom's saphire birthdtone ring that she got for her 20th birthday. Which would have made that 63 years old. I gave that to my neice Autumn since she was her only living grandchild. I took mom's engagement ring. It brings so many memories to me. Much more than either of the other ones would have. Mom wore the diamond with the wedding ring. They were not a set and the rings rubbed. The bottom of the band of the diamond rubbed almost all the way through. She stopped wearing it because it was almost ready to break. She wore her wedding band until she lost so much weight that it was falling off her finger. I put that on her when she died and she is buried with it. I knew that she would want that. When I am down to where I am going to stay at for most of the time. I am going to take the diamond to the jewelers and have the bad replaced and then sized for my finger.

I have mom's ceder jewlery box that she use to keep on her dresser. And of course all the clippings from the newspapers that she had in it. Along with the jewlery that she hardly ever wore.

There are all of the old family pictures. I have taken some of them and make collages for her family and for dad's. I have pictures of mom and dad when they were both 6 months old. Mom was born September 12, 1920 and dad was born on September 6, 1916. They met when they were 7 and 11 and when dad went to war asked mom to write to him. She told him that maybe she will and maybe she won't. That was a running joke between them because I always remember them saying that to each other. I was so lucky to have parents that loved each other so much. To the day she died she always called him her honey boy and said that she would never remarry because when you have the best you can't get any better.

I could go on and on and never get tired. I miss them both so much. Dad passed in 1970 at the age of 53 and mom in 2003 at the age of 82. It seems like the older I get the more I miss them. It is a deep gnawing pain at times and other times it is sweet and wonderful memory. I better go before I write a book here, and I am sure that no one wants to read that.

I truly enjoyed your posting about your parents.  You certainly have a gift of bringing images to life with writing...please keep up your writing on this site.

Claudia

Jean,

When I went through Mom's "treaures" I shook my head through smiles and tears. It wasn't the $$$ vauluable items I cherished but the ones from the heart.

Mom and Dad were childhood sweeteharts, married for 57 years, never had dates with anybody else. They were quite a couple.

I found the soap wrapper from their honeymoon, special notes they exchanged when Dad was in WWII, an empty Evening in PAris bottle (a gift from Dad long ago), his Old Spice aftershave, odds and ends of their lives. Some day, my daughters can figure out what to do with those things. I am keeping them ALL. Those treasures make me feel connected to them.

Don't toss helter skelter. Pack away some boxes and look at them after she passes, then pack it all away again for a while. You will know what feels important to you.

Annette

Hi Jean,

My father in law passed away May 2006. We brought my mother in law here to live with us until we realized the extent of her Alzheimer's. She has been in the nursing home since Oct 2006. At which point we sold her mobile home in Florida, we brought boxes of "treasures" home here and are still sorting through things.

Earl's brothers and sisters took some things but for the most part have left us the task of going through the rest. We have divided his dad's things (watches , cuff links, Cubs memorabilia, his security guard badges) among the grandsons and great grandsons. My mother in laws jewelry has been divided among the granddaughters and great granddaughters, along with grandmas Holiday dishes. If more than one wanted something, they put names in a hat and we drew out one...however on the dishes the "girls" decided among themselves they'd all like  a part of the them...didn't matter if they had the set. So they use pieces at the holidays with their own dishes. 

The best thing we've learned is to take time...if we aren't sure about something we've put it back in the box  for a later look.  this has helped when later someone remembered that the tiny little ring must have been from grandma's sister who died as a baby.  Our jeweler helped us determine the approximate age of the ring and that fits time wise.

We still have boxes of things to go through.  But we have learned so much about Earl's mom and dad in the process.  We have added to our memories and  passed down memories to her grandchildren and her great grandchildren.

Hugs, Paulette