I went to clean out my grandma’s house and it was probably one of the hardest things I have done/will do. Not only because her stuff is being divided up and it won’t be in its’ proper place anymore, but certain members of my family can’t seem to get out of their bubbles. When someone dies, you want to respect their life, not look at their possessions and ask yourselves if you personally need the item or not but rather if the item meant to someone else or meant to the person who died. If we weren’t there, there would’ve been a lot of distress over some of the items that were thrown out/given away.

You don’t go into a dead persons’ house and ask yourself, “OK what do I need?” You go in there and ask, “Is this significant? Does this have any value (sentimental or monetary)? Should this stay in the family?” and not descend upon the possessions as if there was no discussion on it and take them. They were never yours so why should you feel the right to decide whether its’ yours or not?

There were these blue and white dishes that my grandma used and my cousin wanted them because she entertained. I get that, but I had my “eye” on them too, because my family came over to her house more often than they did and drank coffee out of them. Thankfully she was willing to negotiate and gave me half the teacup set. That’s another thing, the other half of my family lived further away and weren’t always at my grandma’s place. If it boiled down to anything, my family should have the final say in her things because we were there most frequent.

That’s another thing, they had little to no regard of any of the possessions that my grandma sentimentally valued herself. They just couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of sentimental value. Just because the object was, let’s say – bought at the Christmas Tree Shop – that doesn’t mean that that particular object had sentimental or personal value to the person who owned it.

And another thing that pisses me off is that they had little to no regard about my family’s history. My grandma was Swedish and came to the US via Ellis Island. She married my grandfather and had three sons (my father and two uncles). Swedish items such as red wooden painted items and straw Christmas ornaments were a significant part of the family and Christmas was a big holiday in my family so a lot of the Christmas stuff had a lot of sentimental value to them, which they did recognize but they could careless about the Swedish items. Thankfully they weren’t thrown out by the time I got to them and was able to save quite a few of them. It ended up being a “do or die” scenario and it really hurt us to see the way they acted towards my grandmothers’ possessions. I only “wanted” a couple of her possessions and mostly thought about the sentimental value that they had to them. Not whether or not that I needed the item personally. They kept asking me about certain items, and while I would’ve liked them, I don’t have the space for them, but no that didn’t matter at all.

Shallow and selfish people are exhausting. I love my other family, but sometimes I wish they shared a similar perspective that we did.

Today, I drew the Hierophant of my Holy Light deck. This card speaks of tradition and being conservative. But it also speaks of the duality between life and death, materialism and spirituality. I definitely think we saw a lot of dualism here. People working together but being in two different worlds. Thinking materialistically and thinking spiritually. I’m just glad the worst seems to be over… but it was a real headache to work with them.

The irony of it all is that my grandmother was the most selfLESS person in my family. She was known for doing the right thing and the right thing would be to give the possession to someone who had a lot of meaning attached to it or to keep it in our family. She wouldn’t have kept it for herself, but rather would have thought about the people around her and their opinions.

(PS: if any family member finds this, I hope this doesn’t offend, its my blog anyway)