THE LAST FEW MILES

February is here already. The days and weeks since Christmas have gone by quickly and we're nearly ready to celebrate Valentine's Day. I'm SO behind the times. It seems as if I just put away Christmas decorations!

Recently, my sisters and I were able to sell our mom's house and now we're on the last leg of the journey to let go of our childhood home. We're in the process of removing the last of her possessions from it. We've made progress but still have a lot to do. It's difficult to coordinate our schedules so the three of us can be at the house together. We absolutely have to get this done, no more procrastinating. We need closure, though I'm sure on our very last day in the house, we'll be walking down memory lane.

Looking after our  mom was one long journey from dementia and strokes, to Alzheimer's, with many hospital and rehab stops along the way. We can't say for certain when it all began. In retrospect, we realize the signs were there many years ago, but we didn't recognize them at such. The sad fact was, our mother hadn't been our "Mom" for a long time but we attributed her memory loss to aging. Don't we all forget things now and then? The signs were not just memory loss, but the inability to balance her checkbook, use her VCR or CD player, and even to use the phone. Her usual organization of bills and bank statements became a mess of constantly shuffled papers and she lost track of which medications she'd taken and when she'd taken them. I'm sure my sisters lost count of the times they rushed over to her house because they couldn't reach her, only to find she simply hadn't securely replaced the phone on the receiver after a call.

A few years ago, Mom was (thankfully) forced to give up driving, which upset her immensely, but her safety and the safety of others were at stake. She asked my sister to sell her car, but when it was sold, Mom had a meltdown and accused us of selling it without her knowledge. That was just the tip of the iceberg. There was so much frustration and emotional pain during the last two decades - for Mom and for us - that we're truly ready to have all of this behind us so we can move on with our lives. Mom certainly didn't ask for Alzheimer's, nor did we, but it's what we were given and I hope our mother would approve of how we've dealt with everything.

After this final step, I intend to get back to sewing projects, blogging, and spending more time with my cats. I've missed all of those things but at times, I had no incentive to do any of them. When I think back to all the things my family and I have dealt with these past three years, it's mind-boggling. I realize other families sometimes deal with worse things, but for us, all of this took place in such a short span of time and dealing with them took all our time and energy - Glenn's mom's illnesses, surgeries, and passing, the move here, the selling of Glenn's and my former home (and bidding a last farewell to my backyard cabin), Glenn's Dad's illnesses, surgeries, and passing, the selling of Glenn's family home, Mom's strokes, hospitalizations, entries into rehab, moving from her home of 60 years to a senior facility  close to me, her many and constant health concerns, that last terrible fall, and subsequent passing - all of these things added up to one giant roller coaster ride. So now we're at the end of that ride. The roller coaster is slowing and on February 28th, the closing date on Mom's house, it will come to a stop. The journey has been bittersweet. We haven't actually had time to be sad or melancholy about letting go of the family homes since there was so much paper work and many things to do in order to get them ready for sale. Right now, it seems more of a relief to have them sold, than something about which to be sad. In some ways, that's sad in itself. 

P.S. As of last night, we appear to have a problem. As luck would have it, we seem to have reached an impasse with the prospective buyers of Mom's house. My sister and I think we are being more than fair, very generous in fact, but the buyers want more and more from us. I think we're going to stand firm and if that means the deal falls through, we'll try again. This is very frustrating. We only recently learned that our realtor is also representing the buyers. Isn't that conflict of interest? He's going on vacation tomorrow and won't return until a few days before the closing. What timing.