Tidying up

The thing I always dreaded about when Mum eventually leaves us is that I'll have to go and sort her house out.

Now that she's happily settled  in Rotherwood Care home - "  Ooh,  it's  like a five-star hotel in here!"  I've just become engaged in the process of clearing out the house and beginning to sell it.

 I went up to Yorkshire for 3 days this week to start just that. Mum's made a list of things that she wanted from the house. Mercifully nothing large, just small mementos and little things that she would like to have around her. I started  opening drawers on Wednesday evening and each drawer proved a journey into the past. While I'd steeled myself for the prospect of having to put a lot of Mums life into bags, I had not prepared myself for just how much of my life was hidden away in those drawers.

 School reports (“shows  interest-but not always in music!" “Must resist the temptation to dominate the rest of his form, and occasionally staff!") Reviews of shows past ("Paul Clayton plays Johnny Torrio and he does very well!", programmes for school plays, articles from the Rotherham Advertiser of things that I had achieved long past and sometimes forgotten. Needless to say it took longer to work my way through each drawer than I had anticipated and my heartstrings were pulled more than I could ever have thought.

The good thing is I could be doing this after Mum has died…and I'm not. I'm doing it while she is one and a half miles down the road in her new home and thriving. I collected her from her church hall coffee morning on Friday morning and she was sat in the middle of a table holding court with her cronies.

We spent Friday afternoon having a visit to the cinema together-  a luxury, and something that over the past four months I had thought not possible. We saw "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" The reviews are right. It's undemanding, it's staid and it's hardly mentally challenging. And yet it is absolutely enchanting. Mainly made so by being able to sneak a sideways glance to catch my Mum beaming up at the screen with the entrancement of a child, wiping away a tear at the sad moments and chuckling away at Dame Maggie's one liners (Does that woman have a contract that she has to have the best lines in everything she does?)

At 54 I was probably the youngest in the cinema, and yet we had a magical afternoon. Afterwards we returned to Rotherwood where Mum could't wait to get into the dining room to her new friends for her tea.

It's all such a turn around, and although there is still lots of  work ahead - I managed to store four boxes of stuff and throw away seven bags of stuff, - it all feels like the change is for the better.

Even my dealings with three Rotherham estate agents - I only threw one out of the house - and a grasping solicitor failed to dampen my enthusiasm.

So much so that I approach my fifty fifth birthday this week with a spring in my step and the realisation that Autumn can be as golden and full of promise as the spring.