After last Friday's class, week 3 of my 6 week 'Unlock Your Family Stories' workshop at the Campbelltown Library, one of my students came up to me and said "I wish I'd met you a few months ago, before I had to move my 98 year old mother out of our family home and into single room accommodation in the nursing home." She went on to say that her mother had moved into the home as a new bride, 75 years ago and had lived there ever since. Needless to say, Mary's mother had accumulated over 75 years of memories and memorabilia, most of which was stored away in boxes, trunks and drawers in almost every room. Mary had just 3 weeks to clear and vacate the house to put it up for sale to pay for her mother's nursing home care, having opted for Mum to have a single room to herself, instead of sharing with either one or three residents.
I empathised with Mary. My own Mum died just 3 weeks after her 60th birthday, suddenly, in the shower, and I was faced with just 2 weeks in which to empty her war widows apartment. With my sister travelling with friends driving around the US (her husband refused to give her the news of Mum's death over the phone!) I faced the same situation. What to keep, what to throw out, which items would Janet want and should I call the Salvation Army to come and collect the rest?
As I sifted through 60 decades of photographs, with no indentifying marks, I decided to be ruthless and only hang on to those which had information on the back. I searched, fruitlessly, for any items related to Dad but Mum had disposed of every single memory of him - no photos, no memorabilia, nothing remained to show that they ever known each other. I loaded my car with things I thought Janet and I would want or should keep, and stored them in our large garage, for the time she would be ready to sift through Mum's 'things'. I had left it too late to sit down with Mum for what I like to call 'rocking chair' chats, when I could ask her about various family members and where they fitted into my family tree, thereby providing some inkling of the relevence of many of her possessions.
Several years ago, a friend's 92 year old mother tripped on her front door mat after driving home from 9 holes of golf (which she did twice a week). Rose struggled inside and after two days of pain, drove herself to the doctor, who admitted her to hospital with a broken hip! This marked a rapid decline in both physical and mental health for Rose. Her daughter, realising this, commissioned me to interview Rose about her life stories but she had left it too late. Drawing on both my nursing and social work training, I still drew more blank stares from Rose than any previous client! Her thought processes were so scrambled following several general anaesthetics and the rapid onset of dementia that she couldn't even identify photos of herself or her children!
Experiences such as these are pretty common as most of us expect our parents to 'keep on keeping on' and often delay our own 'rocking chair' talks for a later time, when we have more spare time. Believe me, when that opportunity is missed, it is often too late to recover family stories.
The holiday season is rushing towards us and is the perfect time to schedule some quiet minutes talking to your older family members about early family stories when they are relaxed and in the heart of the family. Their stories are your heritage - help them to preserve them as a unique legacy for your family, and for your great grandchildren. Your parents may be the linkbetween seven gerations and their stories MUST be preserved! It's your legacy - pass it on!
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