Most of you know that both of my parents are deceased, most recently my father. He died Nov 7Th 2006. He was 91 years old and died in the same room he was born in! Not many people can say that now days. To provide a little history for the confused readers out there. My mom was 47 and my father 52 when I was born. I know, an "oops" baby:) There's 25 years difference between my oldest sibling and myself.
Anyway.....That event brings me to my current post. We as a family needed to go through all the buildings and the house and clean out a 100+ plus years of accumulation as it was originally my grandpa's farm! We should have tackled it last summer but none of us could stomach it quite frankly. It was too overwhelming and WAY too sad to go through everything. In the words of one of my sisters, "It's like we're throwing THEM away!" I get it. Not to mention we received our referral for Lucy on Nov 30Th 2006, just a few weeks after the funeral. (Thank you! I like to think he and mom had a little something to do with that:) We traveled in Jan 07. Came home with Lucy Feb 28 07. You get the idea. We were a tad preoccupied.
I think we finally had the energy emotionally and physically to go up there and tackle the project. It's been hard work and actually fun too. We've gathered every Saturday since the beginning of May. We've made meals together, talked, cried, yelled. We've reconnected as a family. It's important to put some closure on it emotionally.
To give you a little idea here's what we've accomplished so far:
2 construction size dumpsters of junk
over 130 tires hauled away on Earth Day. We even were mentioned in the local paper on that one, not by name thank God!
countless trips to Salvation Army
LOTS of scrap iron
splitting up items between the siblings and bringing them to our prospective homes.
It's ALOT of stuff. And seeing, holding these things brings forth such memories and then laughter, tears and sadness. Upon seeing an old horse drawn sleigh, my brother said, " I remember when grandpa took that apart and set it in that corner". It's still in the same place, untouched, like a ghost.
So I think about how I grew up on this farm. My family, the traditions, the memories and....the nostalgia of it all. It will be an enjoyable challenge to convey all that to Lucy. She won't know her grandparents on my side, only through me. But I never knew my grandparents either. I guess a little history repeating itself??? Maybe I feel the weight of it because of that.
The great thing about all of this is that my brother and his wife now live on the farm. That makes it officially a 3rd generation working farm! Crazy huh? Lucy does love it there, seeing all the baby animals, running around like she owns the place. Which she really does of course:)
PK
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