decluttering

Yesterday we met with a woman about decluttering our house. The idea is that she is an expert on how to make it look good so it can be showed and sold (I have some hope--the lake is predicted to come up another three feet in the next week). She was very clear on John's stuff that needs to be cleaned up, and he seems to accept that he needs her help. Some of it was things that I have struggled to get him to clear up for years, such as at least 50 prescription bottles in the kitchen. But she also focused on some things I long ago stopped thinking about, such as the piles of his clean clothes because he washes them but doesn't get them put away. I feel great relief that someone else will be pushing him, not me. I have to admit it is worth the $15 an hour she is charging us. We can get an undergraduate for $8 an hour, but the undergraduates are in no position to tell John what he needs to do. Now I need to get more of my decluttering done so she doesn't have to work with me. I did pack up another 10 boxes of books to give away and I think I have homes for them.

helping

I really like 'elderly lady in training's comment on my last post. She writes that the pitfalls of helping include:

- being resented for giving help that's needed but not wanted

- getting run ragged trying to give help that is wanted but not needed

- wasting everyone's time by providing help which is neither wanted nor needed (although it never seems so at the time).

It is so hard to draw the line of the help that is wanted but not needed.

I also like the idea of being an elderly lady in training. I feel like I'm having to learn early lessons about letting go of control over my life that most people face at the end of life. And since my grandmother and her sister died of Alzheimer's the long slow way I do keep asking myself what would I want.

I'm thinking a lot about letting go of control and letting go of validating myself by what I achieve (the program I have spent the last five years building may get killed because of budget cuts). There isn't much sense of achievement available in caregiving, it is more like a losing battle against the forces of entropy.