The bearings were never intended to go unattended for periods this long.
they are located in the centre of the lower spring seat, in a steel encased raceway, I can't remember precisely but there is approx 60 maybe 70 small ball bearings in the race.
One has to disassemble the strut off the car to get at them. I've done them twice now in the time I've owned the car. Even tho you can hear the groaning you may still be able to salvage them, one has to remove the race from the spring seat, remove the upper cap, drop them all out into a pan & clean them all, clean out the raceway, reapply a healthy amount of EP grease and set them back into the race, press the cap back down on & reinsert the race back into the spring seat.
It is time consuming....and one needs a spring compressor.