My mother died in 2009. It
was an incredibly difficult time in my life, it goes without saying.
She lived a thousand miles
away and after she passed it was my responsibility to vacate her apartment in
Florida. It was a small, one-bedroom place, but it was packed wall-to-wall with
her belongings. My mother had great taste-she could have been an interior
designer-and none of her stuff was junk. Nevertheless, there was a lot of stuff
in her home.
Mom was always shopping,
always accumulating more stuff. She had antique furniture throughout her
apartment, a stunning oak canopy-bed that consumed almost her entire bedroom,
two closets jam packed with clothes, picture frames standing on every flat
surface, original artwork hanging on the walls, and tasteful creative
decorations in every nook and cranny and crevasse. There was 64 years of
accumulation in that apartment.
So I did what any son would
do: I rented a large truck from U-Haul. Then I called a storage place back in
Ohio to make sure they had a big enough storage unit. The cost of the truck was
$1600. The storage facility was $120 per month for the size I needed.
Memories
At first I didn't want to
let go of anything. If you've ever lost a parent or a loved one or been through
a similarly emotional time, then you understand exactly how hard it was for me
to let go of any of those possessions. So instead of letting go, I was going to
cram every trinket and figurine and piece of oversized furniture into that
Lilliputian storage locker in Ohio. Floor to ceiling. That way I knew that Mom's
stuff was there if I ever wanted it, if I ever needed access to it for some
incomprehensible reason. I even planned to put a few pieces of Mom's furniture
in my home as subtle reminders of her.
I started boxing up her
belongings. Every picture frame and every little porcelain doll and every white
doily on every shelf. I packed every bit of her that remained.
Or so I thought.
And then I looked under her bed…
Among the organized chaos
that comprised the crawlspace beneath her bed, there were five boxes, each
labeled with a number. Each numbered box was sealed with packing tape. I cut
through the tape and found old papers from my elementary school days from
nearly a quarter of a century ago. Spelling tests, cursive writing lessons,
artwork, it was all there, every shred of paper from my first five years of
school. It was evident that she hadn't accessed the sealed boxes in years. And
yet Mom had held on to these things because she was trying to hold on to pieces
of me, to pieces of the past, much like I was attempting to hold on to pieces
of her and her past.
That's when I realized my
retention efforts were futile. I could hold on to her memories without her
stuff, just as she had always remembered me and my childhood and all of our
memories without ever accessing those sealed boxes under her bed. She didn't
need papers from twenty-five years ago to remember me, just as I didn't need a
storage locker filled with her stuff to remember her.
I called U-Haul and canceled
the truck. And then, over the next week, I started donating all of her stuff to
places and people who could actually use it.
Lessons Learned
Yes, it was difficult to let
go, but I realized quite a few things about our relationship between memories
and possessions during the entire experience:
•
I am not
my stuff. We are more than our possessions.
•
Our memories are not under our beds. Memories are within us, not
within our things.
•
An item
that is sentimental for us can be an item that is useful for someone else.
•
Holding
on to stuff weighs on us mentally and emotionally. Letting go is freeing.
•
You can
take pictures of items you want to remember.
•
Old
photographs can be scanned.
It is important to note that
I don't think that sentimental items are bad or evil or that holding on to them
is wrong. I don't. Rather, I think the perniciousness of sentimental items-and
sentimentality in general-is far more subtle. If you want to get rid of an
Giant Leap or Baby Steps
When I returned to Ohio, I
had four boxes of Mom's photographs in my trunk, which I would later scan and
backup online. I found a scanner that made scanning the photos easy. Those
photos are digital now; they can be used in digital picture frames instead of
collecting dust in a basement somewhere. I no longer have the clutter of their
boxes laying around and weighing me down, and they can never be destroyed in a
fire.
I donated everything else.
All of it. Literally. I donated every piece of furniture and all of her clothes
and every decorative item she had strewn throughout her home. That was a giant
leap for me, but I felt as if it needed to be done to remove the weight- the
emotional gravitas-of the situation from my shoulders.
You see, I don't need Mom's
stuff to remind me of her. There are traces of her everywhere. In the way I
act, in the way I treat others, even in my smile. She's still there, and she
was never part of her stuff.
Whenever I give advice, I
tend to give two options. The first option is usually the giant leap option,
the dive-in-head-first option (e.g., get rid of everything, smash your TV,
throw out all your stuff, quickly rip off the band-aid, etc.). This option isn't
for everyone, and it's often not for me, but in this case, that's what I did. I
donated everything.
The second option is to take
baby steps, and it works because it helps you build momentum by taking action.
Look at it this way: what sentimental item can you get rid of today that you've
wanted to get rid of for a while? Start there. Then pick one or two things per
week and gradually increase your efforts as you feel more comfortable.
Whichever option you choose,
the important part is that you take action. That is to say, never leave the
scene of a good idea without taking action. What will you do today to part ways
with sentimental items that are weighing you down?
Related Topics
Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, DMCA Policy and Compliant
Copyright © 2018-2024 BrainKart.com; All Rights Reserved. Developed by Therithal info, Chennai.