The Arduous Task of the Family Home

 The transition of a family home is not easy.  Perhaps the easiest method is the most common.  Children have moved on and established lives of their own often with a family.  They have no interest in the childhood home.  It was painful for me to watch the Thorp residence transition.  Because the home often is a metaphor for the family, the entire family, it may cause more grief than just the passing of one family member.  You abstractly are burying a family history, and this is difficult.  There is no way around it except to hide.  You can ignore the family bereavement, or you can acknowledge it.  The easiest way is to let others handle the transition of the estate no matter how large or how small.  Estate companies exist for this reason, because it is exceedingly difficult to sort through decades of personal belongings and attempt to give them adequate closure.  Family money is beneficial in most cases, and wealth is accrued through families.  There are a handful of families in the world that hold most of the wealth.  They know the benefits of estate planning and inheritance and how to avoid excessive taxation.  The GOP is an expert, and bounden duty of Republicans use every loophole in the book to amass and save their fortunes.  To discard a family home because of potential emotional strife is wasteful.  Real property or real estate is one of the most valuable commodities, and it should be respected.  The grift is the grief of the absence or passing of a family member.  The family home is a reminder, not a commemoration.  It is possible to transform the home into a healthy future living environment but not without considerable reflection, remembrance, bereavement, and toil.  I can't say there is any pleasure in the loss of a loved one.  There may be an inheritance, and down the road that should be an asset.  It is a scenario relying upon patience.  There is little immediate gratification, and often you may regress in mental adjustment.  You will experience more loss trying to resurrect a family home.  For this reason most families chose to move on.  They leave the difficult tasks to others, mainly an estate company who will bear the burden of finding and organizing family belongings.  I know from first hand experience I have learned more about my mother's life sorting through her belongings than having been reared by her.  Perhaps this is natural.  The parental relationship exists for a reason, and while children can be friends with their parents, the priority for parents is to rear healthy and productive children.  This means discipline, structure, and boundaries.  While I lived with my mother the last ten years, it was more difficult than my childhood.  An adult child living with an aging parent requires an extremely strong will.  My mother was more demanding than I remember, but looking back I saw it was her teaching methodology.  It forced me to excel in my decisions and finding solutions to problems.  It was easy enough, because her lack of knowledge and experience in certain areas made it easy for me to find successful remedies.  She challenged me with her shortcomings, and with thirty years of experience and knowledge I was able to solve most problems.  Now that is no longer is present in our home, it is a different ballgame.  Things have become much more difficult, because the senior voice is absent.  With its head strong will, holding of power, and authority gone, there is nothing against which to rebel.  Your mind becomes awash in doubt, uncertainty, and weakness.  You are on your own, and your neighbors are not your family.  They are not blood.  They are not kin.  You are competing with the Jones's.  There is ZERO support.  If you succumb to your emotions, then you will suffer.  You must use your mind.  The home by nature and design is intended to support you.  That could include a family.  Perhaps not.  How does and can a home support a human being?  It must provide the things one needs to survive.  Above that requirement if a home is to be happy and nurturing, it must do more.  It must do more today, because the concepts of community, fellowship, communion, and solidarity have come into question from a Trump presidency.  Donald Trump effectively divided the American people and cast them against each other for the first time since the Civil War.  A large faction of Hippies protested the War in Viet Nam, and the Civil Rights Movement recognized and fought against discrimination.  Domestic terrorism, mass public slaughter, and hate crimes were not the norm.  Radicalization has made life in America more difficult.  Your home is all you have, whether it is a trailer, a van, a tent, a bunk, or a luxury condominium.  You need for it to support your physical, mental, and emotional needs, because the minute you step outside into the urban battle field you will be tested.  The home with its support is meant to revive you from battle.  Uncluttering decades of family belongings may be the first step, because these things while sentimental, will not help you in your daily routine of survival.  Determining what can remain to remind you of your roots, and what must go because it has become a deterrent is an arduous task.