1. I was unloading the big cupboard and packing boxes in Mom's basement during the solar eclipse. I am so determined to get Mom's house cleared out that I almost forgot there was a solar eclipse. Later, I read others' experiences on Facebook, but I have no first hand knowledge at all if, in Kellogg, birds stopped singing or if street lights came on. I did find two cast iron pans I didn't realize Mom had squirreled away in this cupboard and I look forward to cooking with them.
2. Working in Mom's basement haunts me. As Mom's mobility deteriorated, she was determined to continue to use the basement to store surplus food, toilet paper, paper towels, and other things and to continue to make regular trips up and down the stairs, one foot on a step, the other foot on the same step, slowly, one hand on the rail, the other hand holding her cloth laundry bag or a plastic grocery bag with ground beef or pork steaks from the freezer. It scared me that she was going up and down those stairs so often.
Working in Mom's basement brought back to mind the day in early March, 2015 when Mom fell and broke her collarbone. The accident occurred in the basement. Mom always kept many rolls of toilet paper on the living room level of her house in a cupboard near the bathroom and she wanted there to always be about a dozen rolls in that cupboard and three or four rolls in the bathroom. On March 5, 2015 she decided she needed to replenish the upstairs supply and went to the bathroom in the basement where she kept surplus toilet paper under the sink.
I'm haunted by my knowledge that this wasn't a toilet paper emergency, by my knowledge that Mom could have waited until Carol came to the house and asked her to get the toilet paper from the basement.
I'm haunted by knowing that when Mom bent down to get toilet paper rolls out from under the sink she fell, maybe as she was standing up again, and slammed her shoulder against something and suffered a fracture.
I had had fantasies before this happened of hiring someone to come to Mom's house and seal off the basement door.
Later, after her fracture and surgery, I had arguments with Mom about her going to the basement. She never wanted to give that up. Going to the basement endangered her, she stubbornly resisted that fact, and she hated finally being barred from going down there. I'm haunted by our arguments over this.
As Mom became increasingly immobile, dependent on a cane and then her walker, she lamented not being able to go to the basement as much or more than anything.
The basement vividly represented to Mom how her world was shrinking, how much she was limited by the deterioration and betrayal of her body from her waist to her feet.
I'm haunted by all she suffered in relation to the basement as I work to clear all the things out of there. For Mom, that basement just might have been the most important space in the whole house for her -- and the most dangerous.
3. Everett backed his pickup into Mom's driveway and I loaded it with a mountain of 13 gallon Glad bags full of refuse along with old carpeting and useless paint stained chairs that have been in the basement since before I was in high school. We'll make our first run to the dump Tuesday morning.
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