Featured The Tale of the Missing China...

Back when my folks were still married my Great Aunt gave my Mom the Family China to keep, but rather than take it home (Dad's eyes would have lit up with dollar signs and probably would have sold them!) Mom took them to her mother for safekeeping. It was the Franciscan Apple dinnerware pattern from 1940! (Google it for pix.) FFW. 15 to 20 years in the early 1990s, and a few years after Grandma Julie had passed away (breast cancer, damn it!) she remembered the China. When she went looking for them where she had put them and they were gone! Grandma never would have sold them, but someone in the family must have taken them. But, several aunts and uncles spread the word to help me find them recently. Sadly, after my Great Aunt passed away--the one who gave Mom the family china--Dad had an auction to sell off all of her things, including the family silver, which my Great Aunt kept with a note stating she wanted me to have it. (I was very close to my Great Aunt.) But, Dad auctioned it off anyway, without my knowledge. At the time, it really hurt my feelings that it seemed that Dad and his wife wouldn't let me into Aunt Liz's house. They would only open the door a crack to speak to me. Be sure that i love my family fiercely, but I was still hurt. My brother doesn't understand. But, as long as I could remember I imagined that I would inherit some of her belongings, which I would break out for family dinners that I'd wanted to host. I would have cared for the items and thought of Great Aunt Liz whenever I used them.

 

that sucks.....

 

VERILY! I adore old, beautiful items and I would have cherished my Great Aunt's belongings! Yet, it seems at every step along the way forces were set in motion to prevent me from inheriting any beautiful antiques. Particularly since Dad wants to cash in on them, and Mom either doesn't want them (she hates antiques anyway) or she's so low on the pecking order that her elder siblings gets first dibs, which leaves her the scraps.

 

Such a pity that Great Aunt didn't specify her wishes in a will!
Sorry, I know this must cause heartache for you.

 

Well I am sort of going thru the same thing, but not exactly. We are in the thick of a fight with my father's wife that is dragging on for months now after he has passed.
She is trying to prevent us (my siblings and myself) from all of my father's possessions.

It is hard enough to lose a parent and grieve plus have to fight step family at the same time.

 

I'm very sorry that you feel hurt by the disposition of family items. In the dispersal of my own parents belongings after their deaths things went incredibly smoothly and I'm so grateful.

I've known many families that have sad stories about how dispersals went including in some of my own extended family. I'm very sorry, it makes sad times even harder and the resulting hard feeling seem difficult to overcome.

There are, of course, many considerations including whether the money from the sale of items is helpful in offsetting the debt of the deceased or for that matter, of the living left behind.

What I really wanted to say is that people seem to have very different opinions on what value items have and how they view sentimentality versus monetary or other value. It's helped me try to keep my own emotional reaction in check when I've tried to remember that.

 

Is it, but I didn't think she felt that she had to. In fact, if I were her, I'd also have thought that a simple note would ensure that her wishes were executed.

 

Oh, I had to endure something quite similar! After Dad had inherited Aunt Liz's estate, he got in debt with the bank. But, when he and my step-monster separated unofficially she wouldn't allow him on the premises (the cops sided with her, even though it was his property and his lawyer said he didn't need a court order!) she'd call the cops whenever he arrived to collect some of his belongings. Well, when he wasn't around she gave all of our family's antiques to her own family, which came from Dad's parents! And, when the bank foreclosed on the house me and my brother wanted to keep it in the family, but the bank needed her to sign a document specifying this. The step-monster agreed, saying that it's what our Great Aunt and Uncle would have wanted. At the last possible second she called us and tried to extort $60,000 from my Mom, who doesn't have that kind of money and would have needed to take out a lone from a bank (a 6 month process), on top of her current house payments. So, the house got auctioned off, and I was so hurt that I couldn't even look at the house again for years while driving by. But, apparently, she had taken all the shelving, all the counter tops, and all the cabinets--they were just gone and totally gutted!

 

Oh, there was unlikely any debt since my Great Aunt ensured her final expenses were paid for in advance, plus the inheritance she left my Dad, which was substantial; Dad even made me and my brother give him half of our inheritance due to the technicality that his name was also on the check! He used all of this money for his business at the time. I didn't even get Liz's organ and collection of sheet music, and Dad knows that I majored in music in college. Thankfully, though, I did get her recipe box since I used to cook with her, often.

 

& it would have , if the people around you had any respect for her, or for that matter..you ! ....but it seems..not so much.

 

Amen. When we broke up my grandmother's house, Grandma had specified who she wanted to get what. We parceled it out that way, even when people really didn't want the stuff. The only item that people fought over were some carousel animal highballs. They weren't valuable antiques, just 50s cocktail glasses that my older cousins all used for chocolate milk at Sunday dinner. All four wanted the glasses.

 

Not that it's the same but Franciscan Apple is very reasonably priced on Ebay. Maybe you'd still remember her, because of the pattern, when you used it

 

I agree. I was heartbroken upon learning of this. But, what hurt the most was that my own Dad wouldn't let me in her home after he moved in, but would only open the door a crack. It made me feel so unwelcome, esp. since me and my Great Aunt were so close.

 

That's a lovely story...

 

I wish I could say so, but I've never seen that China before. Mom had to point it out to me more recently.

 

I am so sorry this happened to you.

 

I know which glasses you are talking about. I sold a few of them a number of years ago. I may have a few stragglers here still but their condition is not great.