Losing the lake house

I just spent the past weekend with my family, dismantling my grandfather's estate. Too surreal. It feels wrong somehow to paw through someone else's life this way. My poor mom and aunt, having to do all this...they have been working for a month now. Full time.

Two dumpsters later, two attics and a boathouse later, there is still so much stuff to be dealt with, it's incredible! I cannot stress HOW. MUCH. STUFF:

OMG my grandparents were definitely the product of their times (the depression). In their defense, I suppose it's easy to fill up a house you've lived in for 90 years, without a "move" to make you ditch the ballast...

The moral of the story? DON'T LEAVE IT ALL FOR YOUR KIDS TO DEAL WITH! Let go of things for their sake, before you have a boathouse full of cast-off lumber, metal pipe-fittings, receipts, bottle caps, stamps, craft supplies, garden implements, doors, windows, cast off furniture, and decades of squirrel nests and dung that are gonna cause grief to your loved-ones. (There wasn't even a boat in the boathouse!)

While it was fun to see the antiques buried away,

many of them are to be sold. But overall there is a sadness permeating everything--the lake house has been the seat of my family for 89 years. And it is now for sale. I'm too sad for words, as are my brothers. (Of course, it's not the same without nana and goompa, but I think we all thought it would go on forever.)

And so, the grief continues, as all grief does. It's an ongoing process, I know.

I need to recuperate, though I only helped out physically for one sad weekend. I have strep throat, too, with that perfect timing that only illness can make. Looking forward to Memorial Day Weekend.

p.s. I started a shrug last week on my giant needles that I will show you once I get back to it....