AIBU to feel sad about washing down paintwork

[Ineedaholidayagain]

In our upstairs hallway there is a dirty mark row on the paintwork. It was caused by our son using the walls to walk around and is about a meter high, it was caused while he could still walk independently.
He's now a full time wheelchair user and will never see upstairs again. He's got a bedroom and wetroom downstairs and we've all adjusted to this new life.
However every time I think about washing and repainting I feel sad as if I'm washing away the past. Do I need to get a grip?

Op can you take a photo of the wall before you clean it?? That way you can still have a permanent record of it x

You're not sad at all, ita lovely special memory to keep in your heart. Could you take picture of it to keep if you feel it's time to redecorate or clean?

When you look at the marks, does it make you happy to remember or wistful about what once was? I think if the latter, I might ask someone to get rid of it for me. Not sure I could do it myself - I’d have to be out of the house. But you might spare yourself some pain each time you look at it, even if you think it’s a happy memory - is it making you happy now ?

(Poorly explained!)

At the moment it's bittersweet. My babies started year 11 today so I'm in a reflective mood

@Ineedaholidayagain it gets you some days X sending hugs 🫂🙏❤️

Could you place a blank picture frame over a section of it to preserve it, and then paint/ wash around it? Or does the sight of it make you more sad and it would be more healing to embrace what is the new reality and remove it completely?

It makes you human and many of us have similar hidden emotional responses that everyone else is oblivious too.

You don't need to get a grip at all.

The marks represent something, in the same way that photos do, or baby momentoes, or artwork from nursery do.

There's plenty you can do to preserve it, if that's what you want to do. You could even cut the plasterboard and replace it if you really wanted to.

But take your time, if you do it next week, or you leave it there forever it doesn't matter. Your feelings are far more important.

This is mumsnet at it's best, I posted in AIBU and expected to be told to get a grip and it's just dirt. But you got it, thank you

Yanbu to have those feelings, they are entirely normal. I agree with taking photos before trying to move forward.
But the later is what we have to try to do for everyone's sake.
I don't want to go into detail here, but we were a large family who've had a multiple tragedy, and it's so very easy for a home to become a cross between a museum and a mausoleum to happier times.
To add to it I'm afraid sometimes things outside your control can then destroy the things that acted as links to the past, leaving no trace, and it is devastating.
Moving forward can be incredibly hard, but the alternative traps everyone.

Is it on plaster or wallpaper? I wonder if it's paper Id wonder if you could cut around it and stick it on a frame. Obviously would need to do some repair work afterwards but if it is sentimental and important to you why not.

A very eloquent post, @Elleherd , wishing you all the best 💐

Id frame it too

Have you got a picture? I'm sure someone can come up with something clever you could do...

Its hard to take a picture because it doesn't show up, but imagine 2 bedroom doors and the wooden surrounds with a grubby streak left to right. I know what it is (years of him using the wall to balance against) but to anyone else it's just dirty.

I don't get them dents buffed, pulled, filled or painted by nobody. They way too valuable

Mater in the cars movie says that about the dent in his paintwork. Feels the same.

Could you put a teeny tiny mural (a little flower or something) on the wall at the right height, in a discrete place? Then clean the rest? X

That's so understandable, maybe like others have said you can mark it in some way. There's even a beautiful Thomas Hardy poem about someone whitewashing a wall where there was once the drawn profile of a child.

The Whitewashed Wall

By Thomas Hardy

Why does she turn in that shy soft way
Whenever she stirs the fire,
And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,
As if entranced to admire
Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight
Of a rose in richest green?
I have known her long, but this raptured rite
I never before have seen.

• Well, once when her son cast his shadow there, A friend took a pencil and drew him Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines Had a lifelike semblance to him. And there long stayed his familiar look; But one day, ere she knew, The whitener came to cleanse the nook, And covered the face from view.

"Yes," he said: "My brush goes on with a rush,
And the draught is buried under;
When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,
What else can you do, I wonder?"
But she knows he's there. And when she yearns
For him, deep in the labouring night,
She sees him as close at hand, and turns
To him under his sheet of white.

What a beautiful poem.

Love the Thomas Hardy poem.
Why not redecorate but incorporate a line in the new scheme (like a dado rail or frieze or just a coloured stripe) where the marks are now? It would look fresh but still remind you of the important memories.

How about some panelling up to the height of the marks, then paint above but leave a bit of a gap?

I've got a picture in my head but probably explaining it terribly....

Please dont wash it, you'll regret it, frame it x

While framing it is a sweet idea, I'm not sure whether it would be the right thing for OP's son? He's still living in the house and while he won't see it himself since it's upstairs, siblings will likely mention it if OP frames it, and that may stir some feeling in him about how sad OP is that he can no longer walk.

I would either leave it - don't worry about others, how many really see the upstairs of our houses anyway, outside family? - or take a pic and paint over.

I think sometimes we have to leave things in the past; was this a developmental stage that was 'normal' for him within his condition or was it an unexpected event or health need that led to him using a chair? I think that might change how I felt.

It was a potential stage but not expected for many years until covid and lack of treatment expedited it.