The Things That Own Us

I've been struggling with other people's things lately, and I'm emotionally exhausted from taking care of...you know...stuff.

Things my mother owned. Things my father owned. Things my husband owns.

Even my own stuff has started to run my life. Or maybe ruin my life is a better term. All of it requires maintenance, in some form or fashion.

First off, my mother was a hoarder. A very neat and tidy one, but a hoarder none the less. There are items in her hoard that were made by my grandfather. Tool boxes, wooden stools, tools, what-nots and thing-a-ma-bobs.

There aren't as many things from my grandmother, my aunts divided those items and passed them to their daughters. Which, since I have no human children, and my sister's children were far away at the time, wasn't such a bad idea.

My biological father passed back in 1966 or 1967, but there are items of his in the hoard. One of them is particularly troublesome. It is subject to regulations and tracking down these regulations and figuring out how to comply with them took up my whole weekend.

The damn THING is a pain-in-the-ass!

There is so much bad information on the internet. Even on websites that are supposedly accurate, you never know if you are getting B.S. or the real deal. Inaccurate information from online sources isn't much of a defense when dealing with government regulations.

I decided to contact a supposed expert on this subject, and got harranged by some ignorant twit who didn't understand what I was talking about.

"Ain't no such thang!" The redneck then tried to brow-beat me into bringing this troublesome 'thang' to them. "You's just brang that thang here and I'll show you what you read on that-there website just ain't so!"

My frustration with things in general, estates in particular and MY MOTHER is, on a scale of 1 to 10, somewhere off the chart.

The pressure to get rid of all this stuff, and raise enough money to keep my Dad in the nursing home until Medicaid kicks in, which is AFTER all these things have been sold, combined with my frustration, has done nothing for my piece of mind.

These "thangs" are making me crazy.