My mother should not be allowed to listen to the news. she is now afraid that a) somebody will somehow steal all of her money (particularly what is in her IRA accounts) and my brother and I will get nothing and b) she will die and nobody will find her body for a year. These fears are based entirely on news stories she half heard and not on anything realistic. I think I persuaded her that her money is safer in the accounts than if she took it all out (with the tax implications of that) and gave it to us now. As for the latter fear, I suppose it's one that everybody who lives alone has to some extent. But I call her every Sunday unless I'm overseas and my brother calls regularly and if we didn't get an answer for a couple of weeks without any explanation beforehand, we'd inevitably call up her neighbors to check things out. In addition, it's not like she lacks for nosy neighbors. When another elderly woman across the street went to the hospital without telling anyone, three or four people called up her son to find out what was happening.
The thing I did relate to when i called her this morning was her frustration with decluttering. I did find the rest of the board games (in fact, the backgammon set was in plain view in the living room) and am really now back to the decluttering mindset, versus the unpacking from the move mindset. Mom is mostly complaining about what to do about the books. I suspect I will have to find a few days to drive up to Long Island this spring, since it makes sense for me to go through them with her and bring what she doesn't want down here to either sell or donate to The Book Thing. Never mind that I've been trying to get her to let me go through the bookshelves with her for several years now. It seems she is finally ready. And I know full well that she will want to keep certain books that she hasn't read in years and will never read again for some sort of sentimental reason. She won't admit it, but I know it will happen since I've done the same thing.
Copyright 2007 Miriam H. Nadel