The cleaner comes this morning

and I will be very glad to see her. 

Middle Cat organised P... to help us when both the Senior Cat and I had the 'flu (the one strain not covered by the vaccine that year) and she has been coming ever since.  She comes for two hours once a fortnight and charges so little that I continue to feel guilty. I have offered more. She refuses to take it. She tells me she actually likes to come to us. Apparently we are "easy" to do. 

There is even less of her regular work - the floors and the bathroom sort of bits and the other hard to reach bits - than usual. Today she will help me tackle the two deep box-like cupboards behind the Senior Cat's bed. There was one for him and one for my mother when she was alive. I know the one behind his bed has some books in it but I have no idea what else is in it. The other could have anything in it at all. I suspect there are things that belonged to my mother. They have not been shifted in twenty years. If P... and I do it while the Senior Cat is not home it will not distress him. Otherwise it would need to wait until he is no longer with us. I don't think I could face moving out the belongings of both parents at the same time.

Of course we removed some of my mother's things. Her clothes went from their shared wardrobe space. To leave them there as a constant reminder of her presence would have been cruel. We left the top drawer - the drawer where she kept her very personal things - for far too long. The Senior Cat told us he could not face clearing that out. Middle Cat and I did it one day while he was out doing other things.

But it is only recently that I have tacked "the sewing room". It was the room where my mother did sew and where we did the ironing. It was also the repository for all sorts of other things. I don't sew and as long as I could reach the ironing board we didn't need the other space in that room. "Put it in the sewing room," became the cry for anything we didn't need at the time but "might be useful". I have given away all sorts of things. There is still a small chest of drawers there filled with sewing things - old scissors, elastic, buttons, cotton, needle cases and many other things. I doubt there is much use for a few inches or centimetres of bias binding or a scrap of interfacing too small to be of any use. I will get to it. It is one thing I could do if the Senior Cat was home. He has no emotional attachment to such things. He never saw them being used and he knows I don't sew. It isn't even something I need to ask P.... if she could help me tackle. No, we will do the boxes behind the bed today. 

There is one thing I am curious about. I am wondering whether, on the side which was my mother's, I will find her "journal" - those exercise books she wrote in - or did the Senior Cat throw them out as too personal for any of us to read?