Dump
Some of the things I took to the dump had history:
- My dad must have made the plywood cat carrier. It was big enough for a smaller medium-sided dog, and weighed 7-8 pounds. It opened from the side for easy entrapment, and had 2 inch circles cut out of one end, covered with metal mesh on the inside. I remember this from the time I was five-ish years old, making the carrier 50-years old. It had warped, and in today’s pet world, was no longer a useful thing. It still had the ‘blanket’ inside my mom had crafted from dad’s worn out wool socks.
- I found the last pair of my dad’s coverall’s in a frail 32 galllon garbage bag in the upper barn. When I was a teenager, one of dad’s friends commented to him, “No one can clean up after a day in a machine shop faster than you!” That’s because dad always wore coveralls. Were there not ample rodent evidence all over them, I’d probably have kept them.
- The last piece of the Attack Honda, a mid-passenger seat, was SO heavy I was barely able to carry it from the shed to the truck, much less hoist it into the truck bed. I tried to give it away, but who wants a 12 year old van seat? There was something perversely satisfying watching it roll into the garbage container (smallest dump you’ve ever seen), and saying “Good bye” to the last vestige of my mother’s driving career. I don’t want to sound harsh or uncaring, it’s simply symbolic of the fact that mom’s disease keeps her from understanding she doesn’t have the ability to drive any longer, the many near misses, and enough direct hits that the car represented.
- The last of the garbage on the property from when mom still lived on the Island was part of the haul. Now, don’t say, “Ewwww!” It was a bunch of plastics in the bottom of a can that had been topped of with other non-perishable trash by others since her leaving. Anthropologists can glean a lot from ancient civilization’s garbage heaps, as can we from our relative’s trash cans.
Dementia Dance - Travels with Mom 
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