This is the third part in a series, so if you have not already done so, you might want to read Part I and Part II before continuing.
Once Aunt Sabrina finally let Stacie into the guest bedroom, Stacie decided she might as well unpack right away and get it over with. She hadn’t brought much with her, so it wouldn’t take long.
As she was setting out her toiletries on the dresser, she noticed the drawer labeled “hairbrush” with a padlock over the handle. It was one of those things you forget about until something reminds you and then you instantly remember everything about it.
As soon as she saw the label, Stacie was reminded how adamant Aunt Sabrina had always been that everyone always lock up their hairbrushes whenever they weren’t in use. She had told Sam and Stacie that, if they didn’t lock up their hairbrushes, the brushes might be stolen by monsters, and then the monsters could come in the night and snack on little girls.
Stacie smiled at the memories of childish games as she placed her hairbrush on top of the dresser along with her other toiletries.
Once she was unpacked, Stacie headed to the kitchen to see what there was to eat. It had been a long drive from Chicago, and her stomach was making its displeasure known.
The fridge was as bad as the rest of the house. You’d think a single woman living alone would have plenty of empty space in her fridge, but Aunt Sabrina’s fridge was packed. And not all of it was beer (although an impressive percentage of it was beer). The rest was packed with meat, eggs, dairy, a sourdough starter, leftover containers filled with food-like substances Stacie was afraid to touch, and the drawer shelves were filled to bursting with all manner of condiments, including multiple kinds of both mustard and ketchup.
Stacie grabbed the nearest thing to her, which turned out to be a container of sour cream. Upon lifting the lid, she found large spots of mold all over the surface of the sour cream. Stacie gagged as she tossed it into the garbage, not even bothering to remove the sour cream and wash out the plastic container to be recycled.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“Throwing away your moldy sour cream.”
“It could still be good. You just have to scrape off the mold.”
“There is too much mold for that to be an option.” Stacie wasn’t above scraping off mold and eating what was left, but what she had seen was on a whole other level.
Nevertheless, Aunt Sabrina fished the container out of the garbage, lifted the lid, and looked inside, which prompted her to immediately drop the container back into the garbage.
“Told you.”
Her aunt glared at her, not wanting to concede anything. “You can’t just barge in here and start throwing out my stuff.”
Stacie closed the door to the fridge and took a deep breath before turning to face her aunt. “OK, Aunt Sabrina, what’s really going on here?”
“I don’t like people throwing out my stuff without asking me first, that’s all. How would you like it if I came to your place and started throwing out your stuff?”
Stacie had to admit she’d be pretty upset. “OK. You’re right. I should have told you the sour cream was beyond saving, but since you dropped it into the trash can as soon as you saw what was in there, I think you can understand why my first instinct was to throw it away, rather than talk to you. I’ll consult you next time, OK?”
Aunt Sabrina shifted her weight from one foot to the other and her eyes darted around the room, as though she was afraid to look Stacie in the eye. She looked mollified but unwilling to admit it. “I don’t like people throwing out my stuff.”
“I understand. You’re right, I don’t like people doing that to me either, but can we please talk about why you have so much stuff?”
“Because everyone I know keeps dying and they keep leaving me their stuff! What am I supposed to do? Say, ‘Thanks for the heirloom, but I don’t want it’?”
Stacie didn’t have a response to that, so she turned back to the fridge, took out two beers, opened them with the opener that was stuck on the fridge with the help of a magnet, handed one to her aunt and took a swig of the other one. Sabrina took a swig of hers and Stacie said, “Better?”
Sabrina nodded.
“Good. Now can we talk about why you’re really holding onto all this stuff? I understand wanting to hold onto memories and mementos, but you don’t have to keep everything they ever owned.”
Sabrina pouted, hanging her head to try and hide the fact that her eyes were filling with tears. “Not everyone has family to take their possessions. For some people, I’m all they had. How can I just give away their stuff as though they never existed?”
“You don’t have to keep all their stuff to prove they existed. You keep the most meaningful items, and the rest you give away to people who could use them. It’s the circle of life. They’re not doing anyone any good causing this fire hazard. Not the people they used to belong to, and certainly not you.”
Sabrina pouted some more as she looked over her shoulder at the piles of boxes in the living room. She sighed and said, “Where do I even begin?”
“One box at a time. I’ll help, but first, I need to eat something. Do you have anything in here that’s actually edible?”
“Oh, of course. I can’t believe I didn’t think to feed you as soon as you walked in the door. What could I be thinking?”
Stacie wanted to point out that it was evidence the concussion had done more damage than she wanted to admit, but she bit down on that retort. It wouldn’t help the situation, and it might deter Aunt Sabrina from making her lunch, so she took another swig of her beer and watched her aunt start assembling a meal, keeping an eye out for any more mold-infested items her aunt might have let sit in the fridge for way too long.
To be continued…
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