Yesterday I bagged up more stuff from my mums house - out of date and opened food, old duvets, cushions from the loft (feck knows why she had so many), clothes and shoes belonging to my dad who died 11 years ago etc etc. It was bin day down her road. I heard the bin men coming (it was around 3.00 in the afternoon) so quickly put all 10 bags out. Ten minutes later I checked and they were still there and I realised that they had done her side in the morning and they were doing the other side of the road then. Anyway, I put them in my car and run them to the dump.
Today I went round there with my sister and we are going to sort through the photos to be played at the funeral and the wake. I went into my dads bedroom and sickeningly remembered that the photos (and there were hundreds of them) had been kept in a bin bag from when they had moved in years ago and in my haste I had taken them to the dump yesterday and chucked them in the black bag container. I raced back there in the car but the container had been changed and taken to landfill. I was more than distraught and I just broke down in tears. I felt absolutely sick and still do. My sister said not to worry and we set about contacting the few living relatives mum had to see what photos they had. Luckily some photos as well as her wedding album were in a separate box so we have enough now but I still feel awful about sending them to landfill. Many of them would have been of friends of their that we didn't know and scenic shots from past holidays and days gone by that would have meant little to my mum or myself or my sister or my kids so would have been disposed of anyway but there were some pictures of my mum as a child/teenager that I would have liked to have kept as well as ones of my dad in his army days. Mrs Mottie says it’s what memories I have in my head that count but I think she's just trying to make me feel better about it. My sister phoned up earlier and basically told me the same. Not much point in dwelling on it though. One thing we are going to do when this is all over is go through the thousands of photos we have, get rid of the dross and organise them so that our kids don’t have to go through this when we're gone.
Today I went round there with my sister and we are going to sort through the photos to be played at the funeral and the wake. I went into my dads bedroom and sickeningly remembered that the photos (and there were hundreds of them) had been kept in a bin bag from when they had moved in years ago and in my haste I had taken them to the dump yesterday and chucked them in the black bag container. I raced back there in the car but the container had been changed and taken to landfill. I was more than distraught and I just broke down in tears. I felt absolutely sick and still do. My sister said not to worry and we set about contacting the few living relatives mum had to see what photos they had. Luckily some photos as well as her wedding album were in a separate box so we have enough now but I still feel awful about sending them to landfill. Many of them would have been of friends of their that we didn't know and scenic shots from past holidays and days gone by that would have meant little to my mum or myself or my sister or my kids so would have been disposed of anyway but there were some pictures of my mum as a child/teenager that I would have liked to have kept as well as ones of my dad in his army days. Mrs Mottie says it’s what memories I have in my head that count but I think she's just trying to make me feel better about it. My sister phoned up earlier and basically told me the same. Not much point in dwelling on it though. One thing we are going to do when this is all over is go through the thousands of photos we have, get rid of the dross and organise them so that our kids don’t have to go through this when we're gone.

