Jenny,? Your mother is wise. As was mine. She forced my dad to move here when he retired, although they were young then because she didn¡¯t want to be in India when they grew old with all of us here.
I¡¯m glad she¡¯s settled in and is enjoying life there. I hope things work out for your father.
A friend of mine - who I used to work with and who was my walking buddy at work for decades - is just moving to a retirement community with her husband this month. They are still relatively young and have no children. They will move into a two bedroom apartment with the option of moving into assisted living and nursing homes as they age. The monthly dues include a certain number of credits towards meals in the dining room and a cleaning service every two weeks for a certain number of hours. They wanted a cottage but one wasn¡¯t available so this is in a building. They get higher priority when a cottage becomes available if they are already living there.
She is a quilter (owned a long arm quilting machine) and sews a lot. She gave away a lot of her stash to the American Sewing Guild chapter here as well as to charity, but is taking the long arm with her as well as some stash. The second bedroom will accommodate it. He is an only child whose parents are no longer alive and she is the eldest of 10 (parents are also deceased) but her relationship with her family is mixed. She is close to a few but not at all with most of them.?
All that, plus the Surfside building collapse in Miami, plus COVID-19, plus the discussion on the other board has suddenly made me focus on this. As I said, all our other affairs are in order and simple for the kids. My hope is that we age out of this house, they get settled in some place, and we are able to downsize and move closer to one or both of them before anything happens to us. But one never knows so it is better to be prepared.
On Sun, Aug 15, 2021 at 11:01 AM Jenny Swanson < jenny@...> wrote: This all makes very interesting reading. Sort of relevant to us right now as my mother has had several months of continuous ill health and has just this week relocated to a residential care facility a few minutes¡¯ drive from my house. It felt very odd to pack up her few possessions ¨C she has always lived light ¨C and bring them away from the family home. And odder that my father refuses to join her and insists on staying in their old? home alone. We do have carers for him three times a day as he can¡¯t cook or take his own medication reliably. I¡¯m just relieved to have at least one of them in a safe place. Neither of them has anything of real value, in fact I had to buy Mum some new clothes as she didn¡¯t have enough to cover the exigencies of the communal laundry. ? I, on the other hand, do have quite a bit of stuff and, like many of you, the fibre related items certainly have some value when put together, as do many of my books on all topics. I¡¯ve been thinking I should have some sort of itemisation and relative values. But both my girls do craft as do my nieces so I¡¯m pretty sure anything I don¡¯t get around to using up would go to a good home. ? It¡¯s interesting sending an 84 year old to residential care, a bit like packing up for boarding school or college but including such items as a walking frame! Sadly none of us have the facilities to have her at home with us as her frequent falls mean she has to have 24 hour cover from a team trained to get there fast and pick up with care and attention. She made a very determined choice to relocate as she said she would have a much better quality of life in a purpose designed facility than stuck for ever in the small back bedroom of their own home ¨C which is singularly unsuited to elder citizens living. And so far she loves her tiny private apartment with a falls alarm, good food available at the call of a button, and no household chores ever again! She¡¯s busily re-reading her stash of classic detective novels and looking forward to going out in a wheelchair to see the world again after many months as a shut-in. ? It is making me think, though, that although we hope our turn to ¡°fail¡± will be a long way off one never quite knows and it would be good to have a Plan. ? Your idea of making ?quilts for everyday use from saris sounds a good one Jaya.? ? Jenny ? ? I actually had. I had spoken to the owner of my LYS and she had agreed to be the executor. Well, she has sold the LYS and moved to Florida. That is what I'm afraid of if I name a single person. I have no anticipation of needing to do this soon so it has to be something that can be set up with some longevity. I have a friend who would actually be happy at getting some of this stuff because she isn't always able to afford some of it. But her health isn't that great and I don't know if she will outlive me. That is why the thought of the guild came up. I'm going to bring it up as a general discussion item in new business at our next meeting to see what others have thought about. I am also making a document of the valuable items in the house with photos so the kids can decide if they want them, or if they want to sell them. But this way, they can sell via a higher end auction place and get more money. We have some original artwork that is quite expensive and I just bought a couple more of those paintings last year as the artist was struggling in the pandemic. We have silk embroideries from China made by a tribal community that specializes in them - very fine work. And we have prints that are framed that have very little value. So I want the kids to be able to distinguish between what is valuable and what is not.? I am still working on disposing of?the rest of my mother's clothing and she died in 2007. It took me a number of trips to India to donate her valuable silk saris. I am still wondering what to do with the ordinary ones she wore around the house. They are in good shape as fabric. I think I may just make them into quilts that we can use by folding them and sewing seams to hold them in place. My siblings just want me to give them to Goodwill or toss them but Goodwill doesn't want sairs. And I don't think it is good for the planet to just toss them.? I hope we can downsize before we die but we aren't ready to. We are really cutting back on acquiring stuff but we have stuff that we bought that I'm not yet ready to give up and my kids will definitely not want - my dining table set, my china, are two examples.? I am sorry you are going through this with your mother. It is hard. And I really want to make it easy for my kids. Jaya, Excellent question. My two cents, as someone who's been thinking a lot about this stuff as I help my mother deal with the aftermath of my father's death, and help her put things in better order so that things will be easier for me (executor/successor trustee) in the future, is that ANYTHING you can do to make things easier for executors/trustees/heirs is a good thing. With special personal property like the fiber items you're talking about - or my father's books, my parents' artworks, any special collections like that - your idea of leaving those items to something like a guild or local arts center/textile studio would be a help to the executor, and could be welcomed by the donee, but only if you've consulted with the donee first, probably. It could be more of a burden for them than a blessing. If they're open to it, and your heirs don't need sale proceeds, great, you could actually make the gift in your will or trust. What I think might be even better, though, would be simply to name, in a letter to your executor, a knowledgeable friend who could serve as an advisor about how to dispose of those items - a sort of "fiber executor". You'd want to consult with that person ahead of time, of course. That would preserve all options for the executor or trustee - he/she could ask that person for help. If they were able to help at that point, items could be sold and $$ divided among heirs, and/or donated if heirs agree to that. You could also mention possible donee organizations in a letter like this. Stuff is such a bother :-(? I'm for Swedish death cleaning.?
Th¨¦r¨¨se Shere
Freelance indexing & digital information design
? ? On Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 1:39 PM Jaya Srikrishnan <ermabom@...> wrote: A discussion came up on another group about how to indicate disposition of things when one dies. Of course one can make bequests in a will but the discussion about things like jewelry, furniture, collections, was more interesting and it struck me that while we¡¯ve done a good job with our assets - we have wills, living wills, health proxies, POAs, etc. all drawn up, we really have not addressed other things. In my case, my looms, wheels, espinners, handspun fiber and finished objects, as well as things like Bohus kits are all rather valuable and my collection of books contains a few OOP books. I expect it might all be worth $20K or more including the looms which are probably close to $10K with all their accessories.? I don¡¯t really want to burden my kids with having to deal with disposition of this stuff and they would have no idea of value anyway. I¡¯m wondering what, if anything, any of you have thought about w.r.t. such things. Have you? What provision have you made, if you¡¯ve thought about it? One idea I had was to donate all of it to the local spinning guild which includes weavers, spinners, crocheters and knitters. The bequest would say that they could sell the items and use the money for whatever purpose they needed. I¡¯m going to bring it up for discussion next time we meet - as to what any of the others have thought about as some are older than I am. But I thought I¡¯d ask your opinions here because I¡¯m sure you have as much of these things in value as I have. --
--
|
