Beech Tree News Network

You’ve read the stories in my mother’s column about my grandmother's place and the effort it is taking to get it ready to sell.  After recently visiting to do my part in the process, I’m here to tell you it’s no exaggeration.  There really are hundreds of quart jars emptied of their canned contents, as well as many other items accumulated during a lifetime of living in one place.

My grandparents didn’t throw anything away.  If you could see inside the round metal, building they called the Butler Building (the name of the company that constructed it), you would understand the concept of “not throwing anything away.”  It is stacked from floor to ceiling, in no particular order.  If one were to see this property for the first time, the word “hoarder” would spring to mind.  I think it’s probably because both my grandparents grew up during the Depression.  They never knew when they might need something that other people tossed out.

I recently learned that my grandfather was involved in the Battle of the Bulge, a major battle during WWII.  He was one of the only survivors in his unit (still researching this).  My grandfather was a gifted carpenter.  He built the house that my dad grew up in.  He has stockpiles of tools and machinery.  

My grandmother was obsessed with her health.  I must have gone through over 50 books on her bookshelf that addressed diseases and their preventions.  Her biggest fear was Alzheimer’s, she was as sane as the rest of us when she passed away at the age of ninety-four.  The interest in disease and prevention must be an inherited trait, because I took one of those books home with me, telling myself I could use it to help me with my job as a medical coder.  I’m sure it has nothing to do with self-diagnosis. (Hypochondria is real, people, and it runs in families.)

My parents have been in the process of cleaning up their place so that my sister and I don’t inherit a big mess.  I’ve assured them that, while Dad has a shop full of tools, barrels, old signs and wood, and Mom has a collection of crafting and garden stuff, nothing can even come close to the mess we are dealing with at our grandparents’ place.

All of these things—my grandparents’ things and my parents’ things—are part of my inheritance.  Inheritance doesn’t always involve gifts of a financial or personal nature.  Sometimes, they are messy and have to be cleaned up.  Sometimes, they are traits that have been passed down to the next generation.  Mostly, they are memories of growing up in a particular family at a particular time.