The Paperwork Piles Are Complete
How I Helped My Mother Before She Died
By the time my mother died in 2019, at age 98, we had cleaned out all the papers of her life that were asking to be released, no longer relevant to anybody else. Only 3 file folders remained in her desk drawer: one for ideas of memorial services; a second with receipts for purchases items that she was passing on to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and the third is a folder of photos from her early adult life, late teens that she wasn’t ready to release.
Considering we began with at least 4 file cabinet drawers of papers, that was a huge accomplishment.
One of the ways I display leadership in my family is using my organizational skill sets. My Mom was also very organized.
We began this process in 2009 when I had moved back into the town where I grew up and my parents lived. My Mom 88 at that time, still very sharp, living at home with my Dad and tuned in. She and I often did jigsaw puzzles together which was a great way for me to monitor her focus, vision and making sense of things in her mind. That’s one way I knew she was still very sharp.
I had been away for 7 years, discovering and owning my viewpoints, my perceptions of reality, my inner voice without directly being influenced daily by the family.
Rifling through file folders in multiple cabinet drawers throughout the house, one paper at a time, each document was either tossed, filed or included in a scrapbook about Mom’s life’s accomplishments.
I asked her questions about her life, stories that related to specific papers that passed through my hands. Surprised sometimes by what I thought I knew but didn’t about her life, we came better friends.
Discovering one document where she was feeling depressed, a journal type item, I felt so surprised because that never would have been displayed — no permission to feel it let alone express it with her lifestyle.
Always active in church activities where she was a leader, multiple friends and children who were very often present in her life regularly, happily married to my Dad…all the outside behaviors hid sadness that wasn’t attached to a specific event, like somebody dying.
This one tidbit I found when she wasn’t in the room. My eyesight was better than hers, as she had begun to deal with some impacts from Macular Degeneration, thus I was reviewing and organizing papers into piles for us to discuss later.
I chose not to share with her that I found it. The timing didn’t feel right. It had been true for her about about 30 years earlier and didn’t feel current. However, it provided a permission, in a way, about how often I had felt depressed and initially hadn’t told anybody.
Every year in November I would find myself feeling more lethargic in some ways, wanting to sleep more, contemplating ending my life. It’s not true now and had completed its cycle in 2008 so before we began the paperwork clean up project. And I did seek help.
Knowing that she felt depressed and hid it made so much sense retrospectively. I appreciated her courage to keep moving forward. I’m hoping she talked with some of her women friends, or even one, about it.
Back to sorting papers: a choice was made with each piece of paper. Sometimes making the choice was the hardest part because it required being fully present, considering future possibilities and what was true from the past. Letting go of the past relationship with a document made releasing it easier, we discovered over this journey of 10 years.
“Will I need this again?”
“Maybe somebody else in the family could benefit from it.”
“Possibly I’ll pass it on to one of my children…”
And multiple other considerations. One thing we fell into adopting, after a while, was whether or not we could come up with a specific person who would benefit from keeping it. That helped make some of the choices easier.
The ultimate achievement was that it was done, with the help from one of my sisters, before she died. Clean. So nobody had to wonder, or take time to go through documents that were questionable. We recycled bags of papers over the years. It’s such a gift to my Dad who is still living to not be burdened with handling any of these documents, or my siblings.
The other project on which we embarked was going through photos. My mother was quite organized. Yet she still had tons of photos that were neatly filed behind tabs in the top of 3-drawer wooden cabinet covered in white marble at the end of the dining room area. The 2nd drawer had piles of photos not organized yet, sort of tossed in over time. That’s where we began.
Interspersing paper review and photo organizing projects would accompany any trip I made to visit after I moved out of the area at the end of 2012. We hadn’t finished yet!
Photos seemed to carry a bit more challenge emotionally because visually there were people who meant something to her, to us or other family members. I’m one of 6 kids some of whom are married and have their own children. So many possibilities of choices.
What finally worked out, and didn’t happen until 2017, was sorting photos by each of her children in envelopes, including all the members of that branch of the family. If multiple family members were involved, we either put those aside or made a choice, intuitively, and maybe sometimes rationally. Again, it took many, many hours, many days over time to sort through all these photos.
The already organized drawer was combed through for duplicates later in the process. We tossed photos that she was sure nobody besides her would know who was in them, black and white photos from the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s. I so appreciated that choice so again, later it wasn’t necessary for us to make determinations.
One day I ran across this photo and asked her about it.
“Who are these people with you, Mom?” I asked her.
“Let me see. Could you hand me the magnifying glass?” she requested.
“Here you go,” picking up the somewhat heavy and large round lens with a long black plastic handle. While she was looking, I continued sorting photos into piles of ones I recognized and people I didn’t. Since she had the magnifying glass, we may as well look at the others where unrecognizable people stood next to family members.
“That was dinner at our house before our Senior Ball. Mother and Daddy hosted my friends, making special place cards and other amazing decor. Mother and NanNan (my mother’s grandmother with whom they lived) did all the cooking. They loved entertaining people, as you know from other stories. Most of my friends were familiar to them as we often hung out at our house, especially with Mother playing the piano as we all sang.” Wistfully looking at the photo, Mom paused a moment.
Mom is in the front, white dress with two bows on the skirt. Notice the little statues of graduates on the table. If you look closely, you’ll see one with a white dress for the girls. The dark ones are for the boys. Her Mother and Grandmother made these by hand. It’s not like in 1938 there was a Dollar Store where you could drop by and pick up 18 pre-made!
“I loved those years and how supportive my parents were. Everybody loved them. Mother and NanNan made my dress. They made most of my clothes for my entire growing up years,” she sighed with pleasure. “I was so fortunate.”
“You were. And I loved that they taught you how to sew and you taught me. It has been a very pleasurable art expression in my life, too.”
Other stories about how she moved from New Jersey to California to marry my Dad were included, their first meeting, then their first date. Her values about so many issues showed up by looking at photos, choices made to follow specific tracks and not others. Family influence on her choices also came forth. Lots of unknown to me family history came to the forefront and I found it super helpful to comprehend certain approaches to life from the lineage.
By the time she died, the drawers of photos were cleaned out, too. Oh, and antique aged albums with loose pages, scuffing on the cover and some photos missing stored in the hall closet were reviewed and the same process applied.
I appreciate my mother’s willingness to be so aware of her dying and wanting to be present to make choices about what happened to her things, and to take responsibility for what she created and what she wanted to leave behind…or not!
Pamelah Landers is an author, Expert Master Hand Analyst and Business Intuitive. She is writing a memoir about leadership, including leadership in the family. This is one of her stories. Pamelah@PamelahLanders.com
