I talked to my grandmother last night when she called to wish me a happy birthday - she’s the one whose house has to be sold to keep paying for her care and thus why I have all the photos I’ve been sharing - and she mentioned what a hard time she has been having with knowing what is happening to her house and her belongings, but that she was happy I found the Minnie Mouse spoon I wanted so much and that it went to someone who loved and appreciated it.

We talked a bit about how other people view your things as just things, and how you can see things as beloved collectibles or gifts and mementos from places and people you love.  My dad and my uncle have been really unsympathetic to her in this regard, but I understand her completely, even as I have been slowly checking in on myself to make sure I don’t go overboard and performing konmari-esque assessments of what I have.  I still have strong sentimental feelings about lots of things and 

We’d been avoiding asking her about anything in the albums because she’s been struggling so much with the whole house Thing, but when she said she fretted at the thought of everything just being loaded into a dumpster, I said that if it made her feel any better, I had great-grandmother’s photo albums and I was scanning and restoring them and she lit up about as much as you can over telephone.  So now I think instead of being upset about them, she’s excited to see me fix them and talk about everyone in them.  

I’m really glad it will give her something to engage with and it’ll be something fun we can do when I visit with her - which I think can also happen more often now, because we have kind of a mission to work on.