It’s about 5 years since my mother passed away and to be honest, I thought the grief would lighten once hitting this benchmark, but it actually has become reminiscent to the beginning stages of my grief. When she first passed away there was a recurring dream I had where we would be together talking about normal things but then suddenly, the dream would go from light and airy to dark and ominous as I would shift the conversation to her health and plead with her to go to the doctor. Then as years went by my dreams progressed from trying to save her from her impending death to me remembering that she was already dead. Therefore, any dream of her became bombarded with the reality that laid heavily within my subconscious. This past year I haven’t had any dreams like that, but the closer we get to the holidays the more apparent it feels that she is not here. I have always been aware of that truth but now it has grown louder and harder to ignore. It’s as if my mind has shifted from survival mode into acceptance that she is not here and will never be here again. It’s hard to even type that and for the longest time it was even hard to put death and her in the same sentence. But because some time has passed, I think it has finally synched that this is my new reality.
My mom passed away officially on New Year’s Day 2021. However, she collapsed the day after Christmas, my sister and I had just left earlier that day to go back home, a 6-and-a-half-hour drive. We were able to talk to her that day and night. We even called her to let her know we made it back safely. She told us to get some rest and that she was tired herself and planned to go to bed as soon as she got off the phone with us. Later that night we got a call from our aunt, her twin sister, that she was in the hospital, unconscious. My mom stayed in the hospital and never woke up; she coded multiple times until she finally passed away days later. She was only 56, so we never expected anything was wrong or that she was sick. It was a shock and devastating to our whole family. It was only 3 years earlier that we lost our grandma, her mother, in a car accident. Another unexpected, shocking, and devastating loss to our family.
It’s impossible to prepare for these types of events but losing my mom really was unexpected. Therefore, the preparations for her funeral and going through her belongings were all a blur. Things needed to get done quickly. My brother lived with my mom, so he needed to find a new place. My mom rented, so we needed to move all of her stuff out of the house quickly, as now my sister and I who were already paying our own rent now had to help our brother pay rent so we could have enough time to move everything out. My dad left our family 14 years ago, so it was just my sister, brother and I to handle everything. My mother’s siblings and our cousins helped a bunch as well, but all the decisions came down to us, and since I am the oldest ultimately up to me.
Packing up her things under a time constraint and limited funds was stressful enough. But because we were a military family it was something I was used to, perhaps more dreadfully accustomed to. My mother on the other hand came from parents who were self-made and financially independent. They started their family in the early 60’s, my mother and aunt were born in 1964, in Pensacola, Florida. My grandparents throughout multiple decades, made a life for themselves and their growing family in the Florida Panhandle. They had five kids but managed to buy some land and build a house for their family to settle in. My mother was quick to tell me it wasn’t always like that that they struggled, and her parents had to work hard to get to that place in their life. When considering my mother and aunt were born the same year the civil rights act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace prize, one could imagine that there was a positive change in motion for civil rights. However, at the same time this was also when people openly fought against that change, especially in places like Pensacola. And because of that time of uncertainty and perhaps other trauma that my mother never talked about, she found comfort in her possessions.
Like her parents, my mother had a hard time getting rid of anything she owned. Even long after the item had been worn out, she would still find a reason to keep it. The psychology around why people keep things and have attachments to inanimate objects is something I never studied but witnessed within multiple generations of my family. My grandparents struggled with it as well as my mother, and after my mom passed away my sister has also struggled. What I have noticed from watching them collect things, is that trauma is the common denominator. And perhaps what is not spoken but understood is there is a deeper generational trauma that has stemmed from our ancestors being torn away from their families and auctioned off to homes that were not their own while being forced to work and devote their time to people that abused them. Therefore, having something that they can call their own is everything to them, it gives them a sense of accomplishment and is something they can look at in real time to be reminded of what they have done in their life. Having to give something away is not a sense of freedom or release but instead it’s something more like a punishment or violation.
Therefore, one can imagine how much my siblings and I had to sort through. I mentioned earlier that we have moved multiple times, but because my mom never gave anything away, she had stored her belongings in a variety of spaces. It felt impossible to sort through what was most important and valuable to her when photos were mixed in with beauty products and old mail. In addition to trying to save valuables we also searched for any documentation that proved she had a life insurance policy. Her part-time job and bank had no record of anything on file, so the added stress of searching for a massive abyss of documents and then slowly realizing the financial burden we would have to endure to take care of everything that was left was even more draining. In total the pile of objects we needed to sort through, the funeral arrangements we had to make, and dealing with the loss of our mother put enormous strain on my siblings and myself.
It took a couple of months to go through what was just in her house, however my mom also had a storage unit. In addition to this storage unit, my siblings and I also had to move most of her stuff into additional storage units just to get out of the house she was staying in, in enough time. Seeing in real time that none of your possessions go with you in the afterlife made it easier to part with things. Which is why my brother and I looked at the number of things my mother collected as a reality check. We also now understood the stress of trying to keep everything. Where object after object encroaches in your personal space and instead of living in the moment and letting things go, you are surrounded by every decision you ever made. Each decision represented in a random object, most of which hold no real significance. For my brother and I it was simple, but for my mother and sister, there was so much more to their possessions.
My mother was a creative and talented individual. She channeled most of this through her art. She loved to draw but generally just to create and teach others to create. However, like most single mothers, she lost herself in her children. My mother was always attentive, but when my dad left it was as if any time she spent trying to get him to stay was put back into me and my siblings. She never allowed herself to be selfish when it came to us. And maybe that’s why I always saw my mother as strong and resilient but going through her things I saw another side of her. I saw the vulnerable side, I realized her accumulation of things was a sign of stress but also that she struggled with keeping track of things.
When we were younger my mom seemed so organized, my first memories of moving never felt stressful but as if things were so kept together that they magically appeared in our next destination. But as I went through her things I could see how disorganized my mom really was. I started to think back on the memories I had with her and it was as if I was finally seeing my mom as a human being. I started to think about how my mom would get overstimulated easily and how there was very little structure on how she would schedule things. Our life was always moving on a whim but one that she seemed in control of. She talked very fast and always would say how when she was younger the kids made fun of her for it, but the way she talked felt normal to me. My sister talks a lot like her and also inherited her creative spirit. They both always managed to see things differently, in an abstract and out-of-the-box sort of way. When my sister had trouble in school, my mom paid extra attention to it, it was so important to her that my sister get help with focusing. Again, I never researched much about why people struggle with getting rid of things, but I think in addition to trauma and anxiety, it may also have something to do with ADHD.
No one in our family has ever been officially diagnosed with ADHD but I see the signs and indicators of it every day. My brother had trouble in school too, but my mom always blamed it on the education system and that he just needed tutors. But I think that because my brother started to struggle when our parents were at the brink of ending their relationship, she looked at why he needed help in school differently from when my sister needed help. I think it was most likely easier for her to see herself in my sister because our dad was still around. However, because my brother was the only son in our household and lost the only other male representation that was in our house, she saw him struggling in school as a result of her marriage failing. However, I believe my brother, sister, mother and perhaps even myself struggle with the same thing. Sure, it can be stress, but when we lost our mother, I saw what both my siblings look like when they’re stressed out. I know what it looks like when they are depressed and riddled with anxiety. And I feel in my gut that there is something else, something that has been there for as long as I can remember, something that was there well before losing their mother.
Because of the consideration of mental health and neuro-divergence, I look at my mother’s accumulation of belongings differently. I don’t see them as memories, treasures, or valuables but instead as unresolved trauma and gaps in our healthcare system when it comes to diagnosing and helping individuals in need. It took years to be able to clear out every storage unit she owned throughout Pensacola. A journey she started before she passed away. When she was in between jobs, I helped her pay for some of the units, I could tell her having to come to me for help felt disparaging to her. Therefore, her way to ease the awkwardness was to let me know how she was working on getting rid of every unit she had so she can stop wasting money on the expense of keeping them. But upon further reflection, perhaps she knew something we didn’t, or perhaps she felt the urge because something spiritually was moving her to let it all go.
A few days before the marking of the 5th anniversary of her passing she officially has nothing left in storage. The last storage unit was cleaned out during our annual visit to Pensacola. It was stressful, exhausting, and relieving all at the same time. My siblings, aunt, uncle and grandfather all helped. We got into fights, I broke down into tears, and we all got things off our chest. And as much as I wanted to just throw everything away to finally be rid of this cruel ritual, I was thankful for my family who saw my mother’s possessions differently.
As much as people want to judge individuals who accumulate an absorbent amount of stuff and assign them as “junky” or “messy” there is so much more to them than just what they own and how they take care of it. There is most likely someone who is trying so hard to move on but can’t manage to see a way forward. There are depression, trauma, mental illness, neuro-divergence and other things we don’t see underlying each choice to keep the item. As someone who has multiple family members who struggle with this, I see how hard it is for them. However, there are times when their strong will to keep things comes in handy.
My sister was able to find a journal of mine when cleaning out my mother’s house. When she read it, she remembered a time when writing was all I did, something I forgot about my own self. However my sister knew in that moment it was something I needed to keep. That journal reignited that passion within me and led me to a new journey and self-discovery that I didn’t know I needed. It shaped me into who I am today and who I am trying to become. My aunt years later found a scrapbook I made right before our last big move to Pensacola. It was filled with letters from all my old friends and pictures of a younger, more free-spirit version of me. This little scrapbook has now inspired me with a new idea for a self-produced documentary I want to start this upcoming year.
I’ve now realized that wanting to throw things away and move quickly to the next phase in my life is no better than people struggling to move on. How we show up and treat our physical baggage is no different than how we treat our emotional baggage. I hate that it took losing my mother to realize all of this and I wish that there was a way to have all these new realizations and her here all at the same time. However, I also know spiritually that it was her that made all of this possible. That even from the great beyond, she is still managing to keep her children as a priority. Her love for her family is just that great. And though it was stressful to go through her things and make decisions on what to keep or throw away, it was as if I was finally seeing my mother for the first time. I got to see her for all she was and what her spirit continues to be. And I will forever be grateful for that.
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