It's amazing when you go through life that you don't think about what will happen to your things when you get old; when you have to sell your house and move into a small place.
My family has a Dutch Grandmother - an Oma - by marriage and she recently turned 99 years young and had to be placed into a nursing home. This meant her house has to be put on the market to pay for her placement there.
Well, her belongings are being split amongst the family. And just last Saturday, I was offered to look through her art books and studio. Yes, Oma was an artist and she collected books, not only for reading and escapism, but also for her artistic pursuits.
And what a collection of books she has! Just look at this lot; and these ones here too!
I jumped right in and looked at her paintings first. You see, I've often not been able to look at them on my own without family standing by - causing me to feel as though I had a time limit to look at the artwork.
But on Saturday, I could wander around and just enjoy looking and becoming a part of the work and looking through all of Oma's books - art books or not - and know I didn't have somebody watching me the whole time.
The sad part was that as I looked through the books, I realised this was the remains of somebody's life. It kinda made me feel awful that a lovely elderly lady was in a nursing home while her home for so many years where so many family dinners, so many years of love and enjoyment had happened, so many times she had sat and read so many of these books by the fire or by the afternoon sunlight in the Autumn was going to be sold.
Her books were going to be either given away to family - like her art books to me - or given to a charity. Anything the family didn't want wasn't going to be kept. But the books of her collection really interested me; what she read wasn't organised; it was piled up in a chair in the art studio and not looked after. But the art books were organised in a bookcase, well-looked after and, I could tell, used on a regular basis.
So, have you come across books like this in your travels? Books from an older person who you've known in your life or from a bookstore where you know it had a prior life as an active part of somebody else's life; and now it was handed off or sent off like it didn't matter? Until my next post, happy reading.
My family has a Dutch Grandmother - an Oma - by marriage and she recently turned 99 years young and had to be placed into a nursing home. This meant her house has to be put on the market to pay for her placement there.
Well, her belongings are being split amongst the family. And just last Saturday, I was offered to look through her art books and studio. Yes, Oma was an artist and she collected books, not only for reading and escapism, but also for her artistic pursuits.
And what a collection of books she has! Just look at this lot; and these ones here too!
I jumped right in and looked at her paintings first. You see, I've often not been able to look at them on my own without family standing by - causing me to feel as though I had a time limit to look at the artwork.
But on Saturday, I could wander around and just enjoy looking and becoming a part of the work and looking through all of Oma's books - art books or not - and know I didn't have somebody watching me the whole time.
The sad part was that as I looked through the books, I realised this was the remains of somebody's life. It kinda made me feel awful that a lovely elderly lady was in a nursing home while her home for so many years where so many family dinners, so many years of love and enjoyment had happened, so many times she had sat and read so many of these books by the fire or by the afternoon sunlight in the Autumn was going to be sold.
Her books were going to be either given away to family - like her art books to me - or given to a charity. Anything the family didn't want wasn't going to be kept. But the books of her collection really interested me; what she read wasn't organised; it was piled up in a chair in the art studio and not looked after. But the art books were organised in a bookcase, well-looked after and, I could tell, used on a regular basis.
So, have you come across books like this in your travels? Books from an older person who you've known in your life or from a bookstore where you know it had a prior life as an active part of somebody else's life; and now it was handed off or sent off like it didn't matter? Until my next post, happy reading.
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