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5.50. The sky is brightening in the NE. We are promised early sunshine. The stove is lit and the morning coffee consumed. I sat one of the rickety, elm, dining chairs and cried in the now-spacious living room. [L-shaped lounge.]
The initial clearing out the unwanted contents of my wife's serial sideboards is completed. Only the full clothes sack and half empty rubbish bag now need my attention. Or the Kommune workers won't be able to extract the hospital bed and standard accessories. This is assuming my phone call triggers a swift collection. I have moved my wife's Tallboy away from the central chimney. To open up a Bee-line for the workers. Though they still have to negotiate the sharp bend into the narrow hall.
There is a bottleneck in the logistics of charitable clothing dispersal: Most local charity shops have limited opening hours. Worse, those which have outside, clothing donation containers don't empty them! I was almost unable to donate my earlier clearances locally. Not without a lot of pushing and shoving above head height. The tall [security] container was already stuffed full!
I am not about to stack the bags of my wife's clean clothing against the container. I'm not having stray dogs or tramps pissing all over them! The next nearest charity container is about eight miles away. Worth the risk of a drive? I must have eight poly sacks full of her clothing by now. This, in itself, would fill the container!
Not just eight bags. I am up to 15 full sacks now and haven't even reached my wife's wardrobe. Which was always trapped behind her bed. She insisted on having a bamboo armchair at the foot of her bed.
Perhaps I ought to deliver directly to the more distant shop in the afternoon? Though I'll have to check their opening times first. I wonder if one of their charity shop vans would pick it all up from home? Might be worth a try. This would save me struggling to stuff the car.
On a whim I pulled back the bed from the wardrobe. Inside I found at least another five sacks full of her clothes. All neatly folded on the shelves. The jackets all carefully arranged on hangers. My wife hadn't been out of the garden for years. Never went anywhere much before that. Except for car rides to distant charity shops. Until she finally became bored. Or, just possibly, had she reached the limits of her genius for maximising her storage capacity?
She usually wore the same, scruffy old clothes ready for gardening. Yet would have struggled to wear the same item of clothing twice in daily changes of her complete wardrobe. I am at a complete loss to explain how she felt about her vast clothing collection. Any more than I am about all the carefully boxed ornaments. Which she could and would never see again. Did she daydream about them?
This make me feel so sad. Did she secretly want that rambling old farmhouse by the sea? With many more rooms and hundreds of meters of windowsills? Making it impossible to heat. Or was her collection the real inhibiter to our ever moving? Did she shrink under the burden of keeping it all? I have so many question which will forever go unanswered. Was she dropping cryptic clues which I had failed to pick up on?
7.42 36F and bright sunshine. Should I risk a morning walk? There are a lot of tempting lorries roaring along the road. My replacement Scarpa boots aren't properly broken in yet. They could do with a walk. The downside is the habitual slide show of my photographs for my wife afterwards. I'll just have to pretend she is watching from her bodger's elm chair. It was once my listening chair for my Hifi. Those times are long over too.
8.50. 40F. It was 8.00 before I finally turned the key in the front door. Stepping out into a cold and stiff south westerly wind. The traffic was typical of the morning commuter rush. Mostly female faces behind the wheel. The hedge slasher and distribution tractor had been along again. With prickly twigs scattered across the road. I wasn't in the mood for kicking any of it back onto the verge today.
The texture of the fields had changed since my last walk. The larger prairies had been raked and seed drilled. The slightly smaller fields had gained visible crops. I snapped away with my camera but nothing really changes in the all too familiar landscape. My boots weren't too bad today. Though I wouldn't want to walk miles in them yet.
A local shopping trip beckons now that I have the freedom. I never wanted to leave my wife at home alone. Not while she was so sick.
The funeral director has just sent me four documents to be signed online. Which I then downloaded and printed out. How convenient is that?
The local charity shop couldn't collect today because they have no driver arranged for their van. So I have another charity shop driver coming from further away at 11.00. I just hope their van is big enough!
11.35 45F. Enjoying a second morning coffee and toasted roll. [I thought it looked familiar]
Van? What van? He turned up in a private estate car with a small trailer! With some of my wife's things in the boot it eventually all went in. Not with the respect it deserves. There is bound to be more clothing somewhere but I can easily manage that. The bulk of it has gone to a good cause. I did not want to make her belongings into a shrine. I want to remember her as she was in our everyday life. Not what she might have been but had never let me know.
Now I can move and remove unwanted furniture. Not sure how her bed is ever going to escape our bedroom. Like mine, it is matching, pocket sprung and weighs a ton! She was hoping for a softer divan just before she went into hospital. That was another wish unfulfilled.
We inherited a three pane, picture window in the bedroom's gable end. Unfortunately, it came free with the house. It is totally out of scale and styling with the rest of the small pane, cottage windows everywhere else.
We talked about replacing it for years but she was adamant that she would not allow me to do it. Because it would open the bedroom to gnats if I did the job in summer. Or to the freezing cold in winter. So that job never happened either. She wouldn't put up with a single gnat or fly in the house. Which meant plastic fly swats were always within reach and the spiders starved.
She even insisted I staple a net reinforced, clear tarpaulin over the big window! That was after next door's long term, unemployed drunks used to habitually stand in their back garden and stare up at us. While having an illegal bonfire of course. There are rules about distances from combustible materials.
Even when they left she would not have the tarpaulin taken down. The big window is single glazed, runs with condensation and rattles in the wind! So, the view of the great outdoors, the woods up on the hill and the sunrise were gone for good!
Now my wife herself has gone. So I can and must smarten the place up. The tarpaulin was immediately taken down as an eyesore. I could throw both beds [and Her old furniture] out of the window into the drive once the big window is removed. Then fit a far more appropriate and much smaller window in its place.
This would need a timber sub-frame, insulation and the upper gable end neatly re-clad in suitable boards. It would also need a missing lintel fitted to the original bare sill. I'm not as young as I was. Which would probably mean employing a tradesman for the first time in my life.
Modern windows, of minimum size, can have a full frame hinge. To allow easy escape in the event of a fire. Which is a legal requirement for building improvement work these days. First knit/knot your own rope ladder!
Lest thee think me callous for diving into building work so soon after my wife's death: This has all been on hold for many, many years. She was very stubborn and hated invasions of her privacy. She would have hated to have building workers in her bedroom. For good reason too: Now that I have uncovered her secret hoard of clothing.
Access would have ben all but impossible from the inside. Thanks to her furniture, multiple baskets, including several hampers. Plus assorted boxes and bags, tables and shelves. Our attic bedroom has been stuffed to the gills with "stuff" for more than two decades. Suddenly, that need no longer be the case.
It also gives my brain something to distract me from dwelling on the recent tragedy. Spring is well on the way and is, arguably, the best time to be doing such work. If not now, then when? The house would never sell in its present state. Assuming I ever want to sell. Though I might need to eventually. For the move to the old people's home. 😱 But first, find an honest building worker!
16.00 Went shopping for the essentials. The Kommune driver has made an appointment by phone for bed removal tomorrow at 11.00. He even used English. What a nice bloke!
I'm now going through the biggest bookshelf [2mx1m] looking for my wife's "extras." She kept every Christmas and Birthday card. Nothing wrong with that. I found lots of old letters. All of these have been safely bagged for later reading. Except for those from the religious nutcase in the village. These have gone into the fire. My wife would lock the door and hide when she turned up in their car!
We seem to have far more unused coasters now. Than were ever available for active duty. Well worth spreading the joy of those for my own use. Old calenders are pretty enough to keep. Not sure I need two decades of postal charge leaflets though. I dumped another load of receipts going back for years.
She used to complain when I brought them back from the supermarket. Now I see why. She kept them all! How I wish I had discovered this interesting habit earlier. When we could have discussed it coolly and rationally. Not in a critical way but just to know why she did it. What were her standards for retaining things and why? Was it insecurity?
The mere thought of my wife keeps producing tears at random moments. The emptiness of the hours and the silent house is crushing. How will I know what to do without her? We discussed everything. All day long.
While I am exposing my dear, late wife as a hoarder I am also sharing my own similar tendencies. I even have stuff from my teenage years. Usually bits of mechanism or metal which can be used for another project. This too is definitely hoarding. Because I never do use any of it. Or so rarely that it consumes space but has no real value. Most of it has been in tubs on high shelves and never touched in 25 years. This must be hoarding.
I have tubs of antique clock "spares" you would not believe! Literally hundreds of original, spare [gears] wheels taken from antique clocks by old clock repairers. Both long case [grandfather clocks] and Vienna regulators. Lots of original levers, bells and so forth. It might all sell on eBay[UK] but I doubt there's a market for them over here in Denmark. I used a few parts when I was clock repairing. Just to maintain originality. Is keeping them hoarding? I'm really not sure.
My hoard of short, timber offcuts has found the new stove quite entertaining. Rather than merely gathering [saw]dust in the workshop. I really can't recommend larch for a fuel. It spits sparks!
18.12 I am deliberately not having a nap today. I want to re-establish my normal sleeping pattern. Too many, far too early mornings of late! He said, promptly dropping off to sleep!
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