ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Siblings, host Amy Rogan and her brother Rob, tackle the rising "millennial inheritance" problem: what happens when you inherit not just money but decades of possessions, holiday decor, and hoarded collections while also navigating dementia and caregiving.
They share family stories about Longaberger baskets, storage units, and the emotional, practical, and financial challenges of sorting parents’ belongings — plus why talking about it now can make a difference. (Part 1 of 2)
Check out Nick Fox Radio and the Millennial Inheritance Community. YouTube: @NickFoxRadio
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SHOW NOTES 🔗
TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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Hey, it's half of the Rolling Rogans because
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I am not with Joe right now. And I've got a special guest.
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My brother Rob Sunderland is back with us again.
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And we are going to talk about a trend that's going
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on right now with millennial inheritance. We definitely
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have our own that we're going to be dealing with our parents.
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And so this is going to be a 2-part thing because we're going to talk
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about what we're going to deal with. Our parents, and then we're going to come
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back and do another one, and we're going to talk about what Rob's going to
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deal with for his kids. So let's get
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started. I'm Amy. I'm Joe. And we're the
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Rolling Rogans. Buckle up for loony midlife tales and caregiving chaos.
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It's time to draw on the art of aging. Hey, Rolling Rogans family,
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please like, comment, subscribe, and share right now before
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you forget. Let's keep rolling together. Before we get started,
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I first want to thank our supporters with buymeacoffee.com.
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We have Matthew Pfeiffer and we also have a special someone.
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If you'd like to support us, uh, we have memberships that you can do monthly,
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you can do yearly, or just a one-time donation at buymeacoffee.com/rollingrogans.
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That helps us buy coffee for Joe and his mom. So thank
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you very much to Matthew and our special someone. All right,
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Rob, you ready to get started talking about what we're
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going to be dealing with? Uh, yeah,
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we've actually, yeah, it's something I don't know if you found it first or if
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I found it first, but yeah, just kind of watching some, some videos
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and seeing that and going, oh yeah, we're going to have to deal with that.
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And then being self-aware and reflective,
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realizing that my kids are going to have to deal with that when myself
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and my wife pass on. So. I think you actually sent Nick
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Fox Radio. He's on Instagram, YouTube,
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all of those things. I think you sent me the video first and
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you're like, we're going to have to deal with this. Now I'm addicted.
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I'm watching all of them. I love them. I actually reached out to him,
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showed him some pictures of what we're going to be dealing with.
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And just to give a little bit of background too, our mom is a
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hoarder, unofficially diagnosed, but we know, um, I brought
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in a hoarding counselor a few years ago. She's still mad at me about that.
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And when I reached out to Nick Fox,
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um, he said he agreed. He's like, sometimes it's just better to wait
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until they pass to be able to deal with it, especially since our
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mom also has vascular cognitive impairment. So not
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only do you have the emotional trauma of the hoarding side
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of it, we've also got the upcoming dementia side of it that's going
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to be even harder to deal with. Sometimes it's just I
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think better, I don't know, better,
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easier, less traumatizing for all of
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us involved to possibly wait, but it
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already stresses me out waiting to see what we're going to be dealing with.
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That was a deep breath there. I mean,
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there was, you know, some of the videos that he has, you know, it's kind
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of like tongue-in-cheek, haha, look, when you get your inheritance from your parents
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passing on, it's so much more than just financial
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stuff, right? You have to deal with their, their house, their possessions
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and everything. And yeah, I think
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some of the things that we're hearing about and reading about are the boomer
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generation being more materialistic and buying things and
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then having big houses and fancy furniture and all
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that stuff. And just whatever their collections, which I'm sure we'll get into
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everybody's collections of whether it's, Beanie Babies or
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special glass. The one
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we're dealing with, Longaberger baskets. Our mother
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has Longaberger baskets. Yes. Um,
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not just the baskets, but the dishes too. The dishes.
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Yeah. All sorts of different dishes and themed
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dishes for different holidays and so on and so forth. Yeah. And that
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actually, that you brought that up, um, that came from our grandma too.
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Yes. Yes. I remember when I got married, I think you got it too,
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is we got gifts for every month to decorate
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everything. All this stuff. Every holiday has its own special decorations, which,
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yeah, I mean, that passed on to my wife actually.
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And, and, uh, I mean, I think it's cool. I really do. I think
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that part of it's really cool. It's just, I think within our family,
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it kept going like, so every holiday or every birthday
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or anniversary or whatever, you got some other thing that goes with a
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theme thing within the household. And you get, when you're first
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starting out, when we first got married, it was cool because we didn't have a
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lot of that stuff. But now we've got this mass saturation of,
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of, um, stuff, stuff. I mean,
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we're transitioning from what, fall, September into October,
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which is Halloween. So we have a bunch of totes upstairs here
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now where we got this Pack away all the old decorations and put up a
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new one. Like I said, it's really cool, but it became such a mess that
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even our grandma had, I, it was, it was a storage facility
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with all the decorations that she had.
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Um, so I actually, did you actually help?
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Yeah, I helped clean it out. Yeah. Oh, wow. Oh yeah.
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And that, and that was even apparently like half of what it was going
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back. Our cousins and aunt and uncles and whatever, because they live
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closer to grandma. Um, we're like, yeah,
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this is half of what it was before. And, uh, and we were like,
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oh my gosh, they had to have a big sale and just have people
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come in and give offers on stuff and various holiday decorations
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and buy it to get rid of all the stuff.
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Because, uh, yeah, one large
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dumpster would not have been enough for it. It was that much that was
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accumulated over 80-plus years of grandma's life. And there
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it's Whether it's mom or our aunts and uncles giving stuff to
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grandma or grandma finding stuff on her own, it just accumulated.
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And that's, um, what Nick Fox also said is it's,
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it's not just millennial. It's, it's boomers. It's Gen X. Cause you
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and I are Gen X. It's, it's all the generations are dealing with
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it. But I think the millennial, this time period of
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everybody realizing the difference of what it
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was dealing with. Inheritances to what it is becoming now,
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because I think there's a shift in the mindset of stuff.
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And you and I have a very different arrangement.
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Oh, for sure. Yeah. Just real quickly. I mean, you know, they pass on
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and if you didn't know that she had that big, huge storage unit,
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you know, now all of a sudden you're dealing with the grief of her death
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and now you got to deal with all this stuff. And because the stuff
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is still there, it was over $500 a month. For the
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rental of the unit. Yeah. And that was back 20 years ago.
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Yeah. Yeah. When Grandma passed. So yeah, that was,
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it was huge. I didn't even think a storage unit could be
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that big. It was like a storage unit inside a warehouse.
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And then it was kind of like segment off your
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areas. Yeah. Yeah. And, and as the money, when somebody
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passes, money either freezes or somebody's got to pay for that,
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or you've got to get it done. Oh yeah. The next
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month. So you and I have very different situations. Don't have children.
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Uh, Joe and I don't have kids and you do have kids. Joe and I
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lived in a van for 5 years. So we've already
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sold off everything, really processed. We've already adapted
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to that minimal life. Minimal stuff. You've got a 2-story
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home with a basement, 2 kids, um, that are older,
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but very different setups of how
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to look at things. Um, but now I, that we're taking care
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of Joe's mom, we have a house, but we're still very minimal in,
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and it feels weird for me to start collecting things. Like she wants to decorate
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for the holidays and I'm like, ah, I feel suffocated already sometimes.
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But at the same time, it's nice. We are getting back to that a little
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bit traditional and giving her those traditions that she remembers as,
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as she ages. So we are kind of balancing that.
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Where we don't have so much, but we have a little. It's very different from—
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you're talking about pulling all the totes out and things like that. And that's
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just us. We have a basement where we can store all those things. So,
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I mean, it works for us and I really enjoy just the
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house kind of changing for the seasons and everything. I mean, I, you know,
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and I'm sure our daughters do as well.
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Um, so it fits, it fits us, but I know not everybody can do that.
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Just Obviously being that that was one of the huge, huge things
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for our grandma. And then passing that down to, of course, our mother
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and how she changes things as well too.
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But it even goes over the top. Like there was
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a period of time where the Christmas tree basically
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stayed up all season long and she changed the decorations on the Christmas tree
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to fit the season. You know, that transitioned
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perfectly. Cause I was just going to say that as I think, uh, no,
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cause I was just thinking of why she's part of possibly why she's
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doing that is, is her mobility is getting worse. So she can't go
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down to the basement as much. So that, and dad is having to do a
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lot of this. So Tree just stayed up and then she was able to decorate
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it. Yes. But I do see, I mean,
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I'm not around as much, but from what I've heard from you and from dad
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is that it's getting harder for, for them to change with
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the seasons as much as they used to. Yes. Plus,
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for sure, with all the stuff in the house, I mean,
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mom is definitely an organized hoarder. I, I do agree that she's
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not as bad as, um, yeah. And it's, and it's not like
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we're not talking, you know, like hoarding. I mean, you can have the extremes of
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just, you can't even throw out wrappers for food and stuff like that.
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We're not talking about that. No, but it, it is things
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like being locked into, my daughters are graduated from
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college now and she still has puzzles and dolls
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and games for young kids, 8 to 10-year-olds kind
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of thing. Yes, 8 to teenager or something like that. Yeah.
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So it's like, yeah, of course it's the emotional attachment,
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you know, latching on to various associations
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that she has. Because I have talked to her about, Mom,
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there's nobody to play these games anymore.
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We can get rid of them. And, oh no, no, no, no, we can't,
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you know, whatever. And she comes up with some excuse why we can't.
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Clean some of that stuff out, um, already at this point. And, and over
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the years as I've visited, I've tried to come and help do cleaning
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out. So when we were building our van, I think it was around 2018,
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2019. I remember we were working on just the beginnings
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of building our van and, um,
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mom wouldn't really let us work on in the house. So dad
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had the garage. So we were able to help him clean out
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the garage enough for him to get a second car in because that wasn't possible
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for a while. Um, I remember specifically there was a broken screen
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door that it was broken. It was off the house and it just
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needed to be thrown out. We were up on the top of the roof of
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the van, me and Joe, and we were cutting the hole in the van to
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put the vent fan in and stuff. And all of a sudden I hear them
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yelling in the garage, which is very unlike our parents. They don't yell.
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And mom did not want that screen door thrown out.
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And it became such an issue. We're like, oh, okay. There's something
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connecting there that we don't know. So we just
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let, let that go. But it was just,
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that stuck in my mind for so long and just the difficulty
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that she's having letting go of stuff. It breaks my heart because with,
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as dementia progresses, having all of
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that stuff around is, is one, it's a safety hazard.
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And 2, it's going to be more overstimulating for her brain.
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And it's actually from the studies that I've heard is that it
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overloads the brain more. But at the same time, she is
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like, remember she thought that somebody was selling her potato
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dish on Facebook? Okay. I was wondering if we were going to bring that up.
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Yes. Yes. And then she found it in the hutch where
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it always has been. So, yes. Yes. She's happened to somehow,
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it's not like she goes on Facebook very often, but somehow she saw it
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on Facebook Marketplace and must have frantically,
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whatever, tried to find it in the house, couldn't find it, and then accused
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us of taking it to then sell it on Facebook Marketplace. And we're like,
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no, no, mom. And then, yeah, many months later,
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she was looking for something else and then happened to find
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it. So it kind of, I'm torn.
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Like I want to come help and clean and sort
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and simplify the space so that she's more comfortable.
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But from these experiences, we now know that it's actually going
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to make her more uncomfortable because she's just going to question where all this stuff
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went. And that's going to, with the dementia side
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of it, it's just going to perpetuate that agitation. We've tried
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to help. And I think at this point that it's just going to be better
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to just wait until she passes. And, and I've talked to dad
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about possibly at some point, if he's unable
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to do the full caregiving that's possibly
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coming, that he is considering assisted livings.
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And then you get into the costs of, of how much that's going to be.
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But is she going to be able to let all that stuff
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go? And how would we transition her to assisted living? Like only
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take certain things because we can't take all of that and put it in an
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assisted living apartment, you know? Oh gosh, no, no. Right. My brain is
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just reeling from like, how would that transition go? And we're not even doing
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it yet. So. Yeah,
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there's only going to be, yeah, so much that could be brought
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over into a smaller apartment. And that could be very traumatizing for mom to look.
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, the emotional attachments that
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you've had these set of decorations out for the holidays for
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decades. Again, the memories that are associated with those past
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holidays and now not having them out.
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Yeah, definitely the trauma related, or is it just the emotional
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depression of just the act of aging and you no longer have those
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things. Um, right. But it, you know, the, and I don't know if I'm
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bringing it back too soon for you, but the millennial inheritance is the challenge
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of us kids now having to go through that. And, and one of the things
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that, uh, he brought up was to be able to go through it, to find
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out why there were some of those emotional attachments so that mom's
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got this longer burger basket. Okay. And when they've passed,
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what do we do with all these longer burger baskets? Do we, I don't want
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a collection of Longer Burger baskets. I don't think you do either, but do we
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maybe hold onto one for a memory of her, a smaller
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basket, and then we do divest the other ones, um,
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or, or what? So that there is that thing that they're not worth as much
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as what they thought they would be. Well, of course, of course.
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That's, you know, like Beanie Babies and collectibles and all
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sorts of things. But, um, versus let's say
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when, you know, cause we've had Our grandparents passed away.
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My father-in-law has passed away. And when we went through their house
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and looked for things, that stuff that
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might've been important to the parent or the person that passed away
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is completely different than what might be valuable to me. Something that
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triggers a memory of me for that person or my wife
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for her father and stuff that resonates with her that
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she wants to keep, but she can't keep everything, of course. But having to
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deal with the, all the stuff that's
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in the house when someone passes away at the same time you're trying to grieve
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and go through all the administrative paperwork
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and everything of getting credit cards shut down and bills
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and getting rid of the place that they lived in and so
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on and so forth. But then you got to deal with all this stuff that
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goes with it. It's definitely something that, that he was suggesting having the conversations
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and if it's something that's not, you know, because I think sometimes
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too parents think, oh, I'm hanging on to
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this because I want my son or daughter to
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take it from me. You know, I want them to have it to remember me.
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And the son or daughter might be like, it doesn't mean anything to
16:55.562 --> 16:59.140
me. Why? You know, whatever. But maybe at least it affords
16:59.156 --> 17:03.362
you the conversation to have with your loved one about why they think
17:03.862 --> 17:06.813
it's special for you to have it. And that might change your mind or,
17:07.198 --> 17:09.944
wow, I guess, okay, you don't, oh no, that's the thing I want.
17:10.233 --> 17:13.316
Oh, well then yeah, I guess we could get rid of this, you know?
17:13.380 --> 17:16.816
Well, and that's why I wanted to talk about this is because, and just like
17:16.832 --> 17:20.525
Nick Fox is saying, have these conversations now so
17:21.025 --> 17:24.812
that if there is something meaningful, you don't realize that it's
17:24.860 --> 17:27.895
meaningful to them. And then all of a sudden it clicks because you start having
17:28.395 --> 17:31.507
these conversations instead of like, I'd say
17:32.007 --> 17:34.922
the way I've been approaching it is I'm get this done so we don't stress
17:35.050 --> 17:38.417
about it and have to deal with it later. I'm, I'm like, fix the
17:38.917 --> 17:42.986
problem kind of mindset, but I have to kind of back up and
17:43.486 --> 17:47.347
see it from mom's perspective or dad's perspective and see why it was meaningful to
17:47.475 --> 17:50.569
them. Oh, most definitely. Try to have those conversations.
17:51.403 --> 17:54.994
Yeah. So going back to that gravy bowl, that gravy bowl was her
17:55.494 --> 17:59.018
mother's. So it has special meaning in place for her that I'm sure all the
17:59.518 --> 18:03.160
family events that got together. That bowl was what the gravy
18:03.224 --> 18:08.118
was served in. And okay, now I want that potato bowl because
18:08.618 --> 18:12.137
I'm thinking about it and I'm remembering the— it was a potato,
18:12.217 --> 18:15.350
like it looked like a baked potato with the lid on it. Yep, with the
18:15.850 --> 18:19.326
lid on it. And I remember that at Thanksgiving. So now I'm kind of
18:19.826 --> 18:20.635
like, oh, I kind of like that idea.
18:23.915 --> 18:27.073
But, um, but you know, if we didn't have this conversation, you wouldn't necessarily have
18:27.573 --> 18:30.903
known that and had that, right? And that's the next thing
18:31.176 --> 18:34.340
is when mom and dad do pass and you,
18:34.741 --> 18:38.098
me, and our brother Mike, all of us are going
18:38.114 --> 18:41.728
to have to get together and do this. Then it becomes the time.
18:42.033 --> 18:45.678
Like you guys work full time. If, if Joe and I
18:45.952 --> 18:48.891
are able to, like if his mom has passed or whatever,
18:49.405 --> 18:52.793
however that timing works out, we may be able to
18:53.293 --> 18:56.246
come up with our van and hang out for months at a time to go
18:56.746 --> 19:00.086
through all this stuff. Right. But if Dee isn't,
19:00.166 --> 19:04.006
hasn't passed yet, now one of y'all clearly has to stay behind.
19:04.215 --> 19:07.814
So now it puts an extra burden, stress on the person who's left behind.
19:08.200 --> 19:11.991
Most likely it will be Joe because, you know, this is our concept task,
19:12.072 --> 19:15.864
right? It's his mom and you'd have to come back and now you're
19:15.928 --> 19:19.479
feeling torn because you want to help out Joe, but you
19:19.527 --> 19:22.756
also want to help go through all the stuff in the house. Right. Not leave
19:23.256 --> 19:26.654
it to you guys. Yeah. But I can definitely tell, like with mom,
19:26.830 --> 19:30.372
those are her memories and that's what she's trying to hold onto. And especially
19:30.872 --> 19:33.690
I think with her vascular dementia and stuff,
19:34.219 --> 19:38.226
things are starting to get flighty. And it's the visual representation
19:38.726 --> 19:42.441
of some object of something that helps her hold onto those
19:42.473 --> 19:46.015
memories that she has. So, I mean, on one hand I get it. It's just,
19:46.705 --> 19:49.493
is everything that? And,
19:49.926 --> 19:52.507
and it may be just mom can't necessarily articulate.
19:53.933 --> 19:57.043
Why this object versus this object versus this other object
19:57.543 --> 20:00.618
is important to her. You know, it's just— and unfortunately, that's part of the vascular
20:01.131 --> 20:05.523
is because she— that's part of the vascular cognitive changes
20:05.779 --> 20:09.194
is because she knows what she wants to say. It's in
20:09.322 --> 20:12.993
there. But because of that disconnection of what, of what's
20:13.493 --> 20:16.904
happening in her brain, she can't articulate it. She's losing those language skills.
20:17.001 --> 20:20.912
And it's sad. It is sad. Um, but then she also gets angry.
20:21.024 --> 20:23.990
And if people try to help her finish the sentence to make sure, no,
20:24.006 --> 20:26.686
that's not it. No, that's That's not it. And of course the anger builds.
20:27.264 --> 20:30.942
That's the frustration. Yeah. You know, vocalize it. And so then
20:31.055 --> 20:34.508
you just kind of like, oh, she's getting angry again. We don't want to deal
20:35.008 --> 20:37.977
with it. And then you're not dealing with it. So that's, that's the bad part.
20:38.764 --> 20:41.976
I do feel like the bad guy always trying to— the few conversations
20:42.476 --> 20:45.237
that I do have when I call on the phone, you know, I'm trying to
20:45.253 --> 20:49.139
encourage dad to get some of this stuff in place and prepared
20:49.686 --> 20:53.055
and trying to have these conversations. And unfortunately I can't
20:53.555 --> 20:57.433
get away from Florida to come all the way to Wisconsin to, to be
20:57.449 --> 21:00.672
in person and do that. But even the last time I was there,
21:00.752 --> 21:04.135
when dad had his heart attack, mom got so mad at me for coming in
21:04.635 --> 21:07.647
and taking over. And I'm like,
21:08.513 --> 21:12.313
but we got to have these conversations. And it's hard. It's delicate. And that's
21:12.457 --> 21:15.440
what Nick Fox has been saying with The Millennial Inheritance.
21:15.520 --> 21:18.807
It's these parents don't want to have these conversations sometimes.
21:18.935 --> 21:22.546
And it's It's a delicate balance and then we get frustrated and
21:23.046 --> 21:26.381
then it's just like, ah, yeah. And then you're just left having
21:26.413 --> 21:29.896
to deal with it after they passed. And, and honestly, right now,
21:30.409 --> 21:34.277
I, what you were saying about separating and being away from Joe as he's
21:34.777 --> 21:37.904
taking care of his mom. And right now, that's why he's not here right now.
21:37.968 --> 21:41.723
Cause I'm away for 2 weeks doing neurophysical therapy,
21:41.900 --> 21:45.318
taking care of myself. And so he actually
21:45.430 --> 21:49.010
is like, I can't even get on the podcast right now because he's so busy
21:49.042 --> 21:52.060
taking care of his mom and it's going well right now. I mean,
21:52.092 --> 21:55.576
she's still moderate, but he, I can definitely tell
21:55.785 --> 21:59.573
that just having that one person instead of
22:00.073 --> 22:03.651
having both of us there, it's, it's wearing on him. I haven't been back to
22:04.151 --> 22:07.519
Wisconsin for 2 years and it, it weighs on me.
22:07.568 --> 22:10.666
I was hoping to try to break away this summer to come up and try
22:10.730 --> 22:16.009
to work on some things and help. Help. But yeah,
22:16.073 --> 22:18.382
the last thing that we'll talk about is the cabin.
22:19.762 --> 22:22.809
Oh boy. Okay. Yeah. See if we can wrap that
22:23.309 --> 22:25.359
up here quick. Um,
22:26.049 --> 22:30.187
so mom and dad had a cabin in upper Wisconsin.
22:30.347 --> 22:32.625
They owned it with our aunt and uncle, their brother and sister.
22:33.555 --> 22:36.747
And recently for financial reasons,
22:36.843 --> 22:40.789
they had to sell it and they finally sold it, which was very emotional
22:41.289 --> 22:44.787
for even you. For everybody involved. Because, um, when we
22:45.287 --> 22:48.097
lived in van life, Joe and I would go there for the summer and we
22:48.161 --> 22:51.936
spent a lot of time there and it was, it was great. But it hit
22:52.436 --> 22:56.338
you different that you were comparing
22:56.451 --> 23:00.130
where you are in your life to when dad bought the
23:00.630 --> 23:04.146
cabin and, and explain all that. Okay. If you can
23:04.646 --> 23:08.018
explain it quickly. Yeah. Um, when, uh, our grandpa passed away,
23:08.163 --> 23:11.712
dad and uncle basically used
23:12.212 --> 23:15.485
the proceeds from the sale of his house to buy this cabin
23:15.985 --> 23:18.841
up north. I think that the two of them had always wanted that.
23:18.937 --> 23:22.630
And so it was just a really good opportunity to do that,
23:22.774 --> 23:25.825
to buy the cabin. And it also, one of their cousins owned it, so it
23:26.325 --> 23:28.555
was in the family prior to. Yeah. So it was kind of keeping it in
23:29.055 --> 23:33.147
the family too, up north, not too crazy far, like 2.5-hour drive up
23:33.647 --> 23:37.113
north, a little longer for my uncle because they lived down in Illinois.
23:37.386 --> 23:39.939
And so yeah, it'd been in the family and then they are doing the math.
23:40.357 --> 23:44.355
It was basically my
23:44.484 --> 23:47.852
age plus one that dad
23:48.352 --> 23:51.808
and uncle were at when they bought that cabin. I actually was
23:51.841 --> 23:54.924
kind of joking with dad a little bit about that. So he's like,
23:56.100 --> 23:59.924
unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to buy out
23:59.972 --> 24:03.282
my uncle's half and maybe keep it in the family or anything like that.
24:04.005 --> 24:07.545
But so then dad made a Oh, so you want me to kick the bucket?
24:07.657 --> 24:10.017
You know? And I was like, no, dad, no, no, I much would prefer you
24:10.305 --> 24:14.559
being around and stuff. But just to kind of really hit home with
24:15.059 --> 24:18.154
the realization of the age I'm at now and where mom and dad
24:18.186 --> 24:21.701
are at and uncle and aunt, um, just having it in the family.
24:21.781 --> 24:25.344
And of course too, I mean, it's, it's a cabin. It has a huge pole
24:25.392 --> 24:29.003
barn. So that's where we stored a bunch of stuff, which certainly
24:29.503 --> 24:33.625
didn't help out the accumulation of things and so on and so forth.
24:33.737 --> 24:37.572
But, uh, what, what was really cool, and I don't know how they pulled this
24:38.072 --> 24:41.488
off, is that the sale agreement was that, you know,
24:41.504 --> 24:44.729
they could take everything out and whatever they didn't want to take,
24:44.809 --> 24:48.002
they could leave behind, as opposed to cleaning the whole thing out and
24:48.083 --> 24:51.565
everything. So that was huge because there was a lot of stuff
24:52.065 --> 24:55.111
in that pole barn that we left behind. And Mom,
24:55.881 --> 24:59.491
basically out of the 4, Mom, Dad, and Uncle and Aunt,
24:59.972 --> 25:03.147
Dad was the only able-bodied person and he's wearing out.
25:03.676 --> 25:06.513
So yeah, from a physical standpoint.
25:06.609 --> 25:10.280
Yeah. The other parties involved really couldn't do
25:10.296 --> 25:13.936
it. And you're in Florida. So yeah, all of a sudden it was like
25:14.080 --> 25:17.398
they had put it on the market, hadn't sold for a year. Uh,
25:17.607 --> 25:20.476
they switched realtors and then it like sold in a week and a half kind
25:20.976 --> 25:22.833
of a thing. All of a sudden it was like, oh my God, we got
25:22.897 --> 25:26.456
it. And literally it was, we got 2, 3 more
25:26.504 --> 25:29.550
weekends to basically clear everything out that we want to take. So,
25:29.935 --> 25:33.207
right. Dad actually joked. Dad actually
25:33.239 --> 25:36.206
joked. He kind of put it out there as a joke, but I was kind
25:36.706 --> 25:40.088
of serious, like, you wouldn't want to fly up here and help, would you?
25:40.136 --> 25:42.269
And I was like, I wish I could.
25:43.649 --> 25:47.482
But with the timing of my therapy I'm doing right now, I just,
25:47.515 --> 25:50.482
I couldn't do it. No, but I wish I could.
25:51.124 --> 25:54.171
But yeah, it was kind of the, hey, okay, bring this out, do this,
25:54.235 --> 25:58.726
whatever. I was like the gopher going everywhere and hauling stuff out and Packing
25:58.806 --> 26:02.638
up aunt and uncle's vehicle with some few remaining
26:02.734 --> 26:06.517
things. Because they physically can't do it. So yeah, they physically
26:06.581 --> 26:10.172
can't, you know, I mean, they could move a box maybe,
26:10.204 --> 26:14.003
but if it was too heavy or trying to carry that out with the balancing
26:14.051 --> 26:18.427
of going downstairs and walking across some uneven ground outside,
26:18.524 --> 26:22.002
it just, yeah, it was a lot of back and forth. And then there's the
26:22.066 --> 26:26.042
dynamics of the relationships of, okay, when you're like combining
26:26.074 --> 26:29.520
decorations, it's not so bad. Okay. We'll put this up here. We'll put that up
26:30.020 --> 26:33.848
there, but then When it was like a combination thing, it's like, well, now who
26:33.928 --> 26:37.904
gets what? Yeah. And there was a bit of that, that, that occurred.
26:38.016 --> 26:41.254
And it's just like, oh my gosh, really? You know, we're arguing
26:41.366 --> 26:45.214
over this decorative thing that's broken. And it's
26:45.326 --> 26:48.821
again, memories that are attached to them. Yeah. Interesting that you
26:49.321 --> 26:52.427
bring that part up is what do you think when the 3 of
26:52.507 --> 26:55.553
us are going to have to go through mom and dad's stuff? Yeah,
26:55.569 --> 26:58.759
that'll be interesting. I hadn't thought of that. And I mean, you know, but well,
26:58.775 --> 27:02.446
you with your minimalistic mindset and everything and not really having
27:02.478 --> 27:06.115
a place to keep it, I, you know, you might take or want
27:06.615 --> 27:09.431
to keep one or two things, I think. But other than that, you just won't
27:09.931 --> 27:13.196
be able to physically deal with anything. Um, we have a house
27:13.696 --> 27:16.576
now though. I do. I guess you do. You do. But I, you know,
27:16.624 --> 27:19.908
like you said, you still are minimalistic. Maybe you do take some decorations or
27:20.408 --> 27:23.913
whatever from, again, depending on how soon it happens or that, that people
27:24.413 --> 27:27.438
pass. But, and, and Mike has been kind of out of the
27:27.938 --> 27:31.667
picture. So I don't know. He may not have those memory attachments unless we're talking
27:31.763 --> 27:34.824
like way back in childhood. That's something like that.
27:35.322 --> 27:38.322
Those are the things that I think we might have a little trouble with is
27:38.578 --> 27:41.787
some of the old childhood stuff because mom won't let us take it yet.
27:42.589 --> 27:45.091
I've already tried to take some of my stuff and she's like, well, you're just
27:45.591 --> 27:48.380
going to sell it. I'm like, well, yeah. But,
27:49.101 --> 27:52.374
but there's things that cross over that the 3
27:52.486 --> 27:56.031
of us, or maybe because you 2 were born. Yeah, I don't remember what it
27:56.080 --> 27:59.208
was, but it was something like I remember playing with it. So I thought it
27:59.708 --> 28:03.106
was my toy, but I guess Mike may have remembered playing
28:03.218 --> 28:06.458
with it, so he thinks it's his, and now like we're fighting.
28:06.506 --> 28:09.763
But at some point it's just kind of like, nah, it's not worth
28:09.811 --> 28:13.003
it. Well, some, some families can't do that. Some families can't do
28:13.503 --> 28:16.821
that. Yes. Yeah. And it does that. I mean, I hope that
28:16.837 --> 28:20.350
the 3 of us will be good with that, but it's, it's funny
28:20.382 --> 28:24.216
how after death happens and— yeah, there's some other stuff
28:24.716 --> 28:27.729
too that once the last parent passes away, how all of a sudden the siblings
28:28.467 --> 28:32.619
change in attitudes. And I hope having these discussions
28:32.876 --> 28:36.387
and starting to prepare for ourselves now that we can avoid
28:36.419 --> 28:40.235
some of that, but at the same time, you can't prepare for all scenarios
28:40.267 --> 28:43.314
and you never know what the attention span is. Yeah.
28:43.699 --> 28:46.922
Well, exactly. Exactly. There's that. And then, and then it's just like
28:46.986 --> 28:50.048
helping out, you know, just stuff you read, not necessarily our family, but like
28:50.548 --> 28:53.479
you could have one person that just wants to get whatever money's left in the
28:53.979 --> 28:56.911
will and, you know, out of there, then the other siblings are left kind of
28:57.344 --> 29:00.586
cleaning out the house so it can be sold so that you can get the
29:01.035 --> 29:03.763
proceeds from the sale of the house to split up.
29:04.228 --> 29:06.940
And it's like, well, somebody's got to do all that work kind of thing.
29:07.052 --> 29:10.245
And how is that fair for, let's say, one sibling to do
29:10.325 --> 29:13.502
it and the other 2? Because that's time. That's time.
29:13.695 --> 29:17.225
Absolutely. Time away from jobs or time away from family. Especially when you have a
29:17.725 --> 29:20.963
hoarder type person, that collection, you look at all
29:21.108 --> 29:24.750
the stuff that grandma had. Once I saw it, I was really like, yeah,
29:24.766 --> 29:27.815
you guys from the sale of all this stuff pay for the storage unit.
29:27.895 --> 29:31.215
I Yeah, that's been a lot of work, but you don't
29:31.715 --> 29:35.249
really realize that until you see it. Well, um, I'll end with this. I just
29:35.265 --> 29:37.199
watched one of Nick Fox's, uh,
29:38.712 --> 29:42.817
um, videos, and it was funny because he was explaining how it's not
29:43.317 --> 29:46.299
just millennials, it's Gen X, it's boomers. Like, we all are dealing with it,
29:46.364 --> 29:49.755
it's just different ways. But he said there's 3 things that are certain:
29:50.339 --> 29:52.530
death, taxes, and your parents' shit.
29:55.028 --> 29:58.335
Yep. Yep. And I mean,
29:58.896 --> 30:02.444
it just, I can't even get into the whole financial aspect of
30:02.944 --> 30:08.191
it too, because with memory care and all that other things, it's, I'm just,
30:08.528 --> 30:11.835
it actually weighs on me about what we're going to have to deal with.
30:11.980 --> 30:14.693
And I'm trying to let it go because I can't do anything about it right
30:14.709 --> 30:16.860
now. We've, we've already decided. And,
30:17.984 --> 30:21.580
and having that realization when I was there 2 years ago of
30:22.157 --> 30:25.972
letting it go for now. That definitely helped just having,
30:26.164 --> 30:29.691
making that decision to let it go for now and
30:29.787 --> 30:33.522
just deal with it as it comes, knowing that it's coming, but just
30:33.538 --> 30:37.305
trying to take that pressure off at the moment. Yeah. Because, but it's
30:37.321 --> 30:40.687
like for each generation, until you go through it, you don't know. It's,
30:40.912 --> 30:43.990
it's not like a training course. And I think this is the reason why you
30:44.038 --> 30:47.965
put together this podcast is this training course,
30:48.141 --> 30:51.315
or at least knowledge, lessons learned that you
30:51.347 --> 30:54.651
can pass on to as conversations. You go through it
30:55.260 --> 30:58.693
and the aha moments that you have, that it's like, this isn't taught in
30:59.030 --> 31:02.591
high school or college or anything like this, that you just have to pick up
31:03.091 --> 31:06.586
on your own. And there's just so many nuances of all that stuff that to
31:07.086 --> 31:10.628
be thrust into it when you're grieving with the death of a parent versus saying,
31:10.740 --> 31:14.286
hey, maybe these are things we can do now or put in place now that
31:14.786 --> 31:18.376
can make it easier when the parents do pass. And maybe
31:18.876 --> 31:22.515
to segue into your part 2, like you say, the 3 things that are definitive
31:22.692 --> 31:26.640
in dealing with your parents' shit. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm kind
31:27.140 --> 31:30.718
of reflecting of the stuff that I'm collecting and I feel is important.
31:31.601 --> 31:34.972
And, uh, I'm, you know, Dawn has her collection of things and
31:35.534 --> 31:38.793
we have for our daughters who definitely are,
31:39.548 --> 31:42.663
uh, you know, like I said, just graduated college and what they're going to have
31:42.679 --> 31:46.195
to deal with and, and things. So sounds
31:46.307 --> 31:49.245
like that would be our part 2. So perfect ending.
31:49.679 --> 31:53.147
We'll, we'll stop it here for now and come back next
31:53.195 --> 31:56.568
week. For part 2, and we'll continue this discussion
31:56.584 --> 31:57.391
about your stuff.
31:58.880 --> 32:01.574
Great. All right.
32:03.817 --> 32:03.946
Bye.