If you’ve not yet faced the task of clearing up after the death of someone you love, chances are that you will one day for it comes to us all. But how people approach this unenviable task is highly individual and much like all things to do with death and dying, there’s no right or wrong way, just your way.
I’ve found times when I simply can’t face it. That drawer of half used lipsticks and nailfiles is quickly closed. Macs, hats and gloves in that cupboard under the stairs are left for yet another month. Or more. And photos, letters and keepsakes are abandoned to a place invisibly marked with the words ‘almost impossible’.
But this Autumn, and five years since the death of my mum, I admit to a sense of lightness at having dealt with some unfinished clearing up.
Firstly, I should say, that there wasn’t too much to do, for my mum – like many a woman before and after her – devoted much of her life to clearing up. And needless to say, when it came to clearing up in readiness for her own death, my mum (not for the first time) was streets ahead of my dad.
Clearing dad’s loft after he’d died, we found a Sainsburys bag filled with old paperwork with one of her hand-written notes taped to it; ‘Paul thinks we should keep this. I think it should be shredded.’ She was right.
And so, while I can’t say that clearing up after my mum’s death was an easy task, it wasn’t overly onerous either. For me, by far the hardest part was working out what to do with her two sewing machines, the tins of buttons that I’d handled as a child and the piles of perfect squares carefully cut from old dresses, bedding and curtains folded up in baskets which were to form her next patchwork quilt – it was quite literally the fabric of her life and by extension, some of mine too.
It was quite literally the fabric of her life and by extension, some of mine too.
So, I did what I often do when I don’t know what to do – nothing.
But time, I’ve found, does ease the task of clearing up at the end of a life.
This summer, my mum’s sewing machines went to a charity that collects, services and ships sewing machines out to developing countries. Once there, the sewing machines provide the means by which women can make a living.
Next, I discovered the Five Valleys Quilters (FVQ), a group who meet and make quilts for two charities; Quilts for Care Leavers provides young people leaving local authority care between the ages of 16 and 25 with ‘a quilted hug’ – a beautiful handmade quilt which you can wrap around you when you need a hug. And, Cosy Quilts a group based in Gloucestershire creates quilts for all ages from babies with special needs, children in hospital, the elderly in residential care and teenagers from abusive backgrounds.
Even nicer than meeting the Chair of FVQ, (a woman who I feel sure my mum would have been glad to call a friend), was the joy of being invited into her sewing room, knowing I was in just the right place as I handed over my mum’s baskets of fabrics, cut squares and quilting paraphernalia. I was left in no doubt that the quilters would soon get to work, doing what they do so well, creating and expressing care for someone, who they’ll almost certainly never know or meet, by doing something as lovely as making that someone a patchwork quilt.
And that, would definitely have made my mum smile.
For more ideas on death cleaning, I recommend The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson.
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