Saying goodbye

I had to get rid of many of my personal items in the past few days. These are items that were mine, but stayed at my mother's house. I'm not sure why they were all there. Perhaps I thought that my mother was a better steward of my adolescent belongings than I would have been. Of course, I now know that this assumption was incorrect.

In addition to my childhood artwork and birth certificate (the latter was stuck to the carpet under a thick layer of animal excrement), I have disposed of the following:

• Trophies and souvenirs from high school educational competitions
• Letter jacket, earned from two years of cross-country running
• High school diploma
• High School graduation gown and cap
• Prom dress
• Books read for mandatory summer reading in high school English classes (I wasn't necessarily sad to see all of these go)
• Letter my father wrote while my mother was in labor with me

The last item was the hardest. Reading an account of my birth, written in my father's handwriting, brought tears to my eyes. It was hard to throw out, but there was urine and mold growth on it. That's pretty much how it is going now with throwing items out. "Hate to see it go, but it's covered in shit and bacteria." When Mom complains about me throwing something out, I have to point out to her that it was covered in God knows what, and she should have taken better care of it.

We have filled the 3rd dumpster, which means that 9 tons / 180 cubic feet of garbage have been removed from the house. We have already ordered the 4th dumpster, but it will mostly be filled with construction debris. We are now at the point where the trash is nearly all out of the house, and we can have a contractor come in to assess the damage and determine what needs to be repaired and replaced. It is likely that my husband and I will be doing the work ourselves (mostly me, since he works a million hours a week and I am unemployed). I'm looking forward to tearing things up and out of her home - hopefully ripping up carpet and taking a sledgehammer to the bathroom cabinets will satisfy my destructive urges towards the house. If her home was not a town house adjoined to two other properties, I would have thrown a match to it a long time ago.