A little piece of my sadness

I went to the powerhouse museum today. It was fantastic. But quite sad for me really. It made me think of my Nan. She died when I was 16. She used to live in the granny flat behind our house, when my parents were still together. My mum was her carer. When she died my Grandpa lived there for a few more years, but his alziemers made him difficult to deal with, so he went into a nursing home. All of their stuff was packed away and moved into our house, and a boarder took over the flat.

When my parents separated my Mum took what she absolutely needed and moved out. My Dad didn't care about anything in the house. He let his second-wife-to-be go through the house, and anything that she didn't want went straight into the skiff bin. Alot of this stuff was irreplacable. Including

• All of the medallions I'd won for academic success at high school
• Photographs. All of the photographs - his wedding pictures, pictures of his dead mother and nephew, family pictures etc
• Furniture

My Nan collected nick nacks. Well. I say she collected them, but us kids bought her stuff too. I have that from her. If it gathers dust I'll collect it. She had beautiful matching cups and suacers. Probably worth quite a bit of money. I have no idea where they are now. There was a gorgeous antique salmon velvet chair. That was DEFINITELY worth ALOT of money. I have no idea what happened to it. My collectibles. If I hadn't taken it to uni (and who takes anything of value to uni), it was gone. I had a set of ebony and ivory elephants that came from my Nans sister when she died. Gone. The school photos, certifiactes and reports for me, my brother and my sister, from prep to year 12. Same deal with them. I had an extensive collection of plastic horses. There was a quilt cover that was distinctly mine. A gorgeous jungle setting with beautiful red parrots. The embriodery that my nan did. The jewellery that we'd inherited. A longstitch kit that I'd done of two puppies. I'd spent painstaking hours sitting with Nan at night, watching tv, eating Darrell Lea peanut brittle and sewing. Gone. All gone.

Some of the stuff turned up at an ex friend of mines house. One of my longstich tapestries, my Dad's beer brewing cupboard, my Nans deep freeze that she used to store her specialty stewed apples in. That thing must have been as old as me. Her electric fry pan. They knew that seeing all of this stuff at their place got to me. And they were generally ok about it. They offered to give me back the longstitches. But I couldn't take it. It wasn't the same. And it wasn't the special one.

My sister, who worked with him on a daily basis, didn't know what was happening. The 'friends' of mine who acquired so much furniture rang her and told her what was going. And she left work immediately to go collect what she could. She managed to salvage some photos, and my academic medallions. I have no idea what happened to my brother or sisters medallions.

I think that is part of the reason that I will put up with, tolerate and forgive so much. What will lead others to scream "Arsehole" will simply garner a shrug from me. Because until someone does something completely unforgivable, they cannot equal some of the stuff others have already done.