It's sad when you really think about it. Someone spends a lifetime accumulating, well, stuff. Sure, some of it is utilitarian but the majority of it is useful or has value only to the owner. Furniture my mom sat on every day and photographs of us, as children, she walked by and maybe looked at every day - if we don't take those items, they will inevitably end up in a landfill. That's hard to take, especially for someone as nostalgic as I am.
Do I save old family photographs lying loose in a shoebox? My report cards from elementary school at David Lipscomb? Notes and cards I wrote to my mom as a teenager? Christmas cards my mom's best friends sent to her 25 years ago that she saved? Lists and notes in my mom's handwriting that literally have no use to me now other than to possess something she touched and wrote? Old stuffed animals that belonged to one of us that she kept for reasons known only to her?
What about all of my dad's stuff that my mom saved? His flight manual? (he was an avid pilot) His undergraduate and medical school degrees? Photographs of him, alone, and him with us? Plaques given to him?
If I keep some of this stuff, what will I do with it? Maybe, and I mean maybe, I'll open a box sometime in the next decade, look at an old photograph or read an old note, then close the box and put it away. After the sudden, visceral feeling of, what . . . nostalgia, sadness, longing . . . I'll return to the reality. Boys to raise, bills to pay, and a life to live. Is it worth it to keep those things?
Am I just leaving a mess for my boys to clean up, someday, when I die? A ton of stuff to go through, like we're doing now and like my mom did when my grandmother died years ago.
In the past couple of weeks, I've found things I had no idea my mom had kept or I had completely forgotten about. Some were mine or about me (report cards, playbills, scrapbooks) and some were not (cards and notes from her friends). It's like an archeological dig through my family's history. I could spend hours - days, really - at my mom's house just sifting through, I guess, her life.
Not that I ever doubted it, but when I see all that my mom saved, I'm reminded - more than ever - of how much she loved us. And, also, of how important her family and friends were to her. Family and friends were the most important things in her life.
Her birthday is next week, January 9. She would have been 80.
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