For seventeen years, our family has felt helpless and ashamed at the thought of clearing out an old apartment we own. Even articulating this life-obstacle has been difficult. A friend suggested I describe it as: “My family’s apartment, uninhabited for many years, full of family stuff. I was thinking I might like to live in it and could use some help clearing it out.”
But description escaped me recently as I did call on friends for help. I made it sound like it was just a case of not wanting to clean my own place. “But that’s not the case at all,” he remarked. His comment helped me see how it is a rather atypical situation, just one I’d lived with for somany years like ugly wallpaper. I guess I couldn’t fathom a vocabulary for a task that had often felt so enormous and defeated us (my other felt it especially) so often, yet was just a matter of cleaning - so normal. This reflection may sound overly dramatic to some, but actually it is a big deal. Acknowledging the drama is the step I forgot. The apartment sat uncleaned, uninhabited, unused for its intended purpose. We lived with "the apartment we couldn’t clean after my father died" (suddenly, in 1995) for seventeen years, paying strata fees and collecting no rental income.
But this week, some great people – friends - came to help. My mother had felt so helpless for so many years. And today we had friends to help. That, in itself, is astonishing. And, I think, highlights a key difference between my life experience in community and my mum’s migrant isolation.
I erred grossly by not taking a “before” shot. Just picture baskets of miscellaneous "stuff" everywhere.
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