The Things we Keep

My neighbor directly across the street died a few weeks back, at the age of 92. His wife died about five years earlier. They lived in the same house for about 50 years,and raised five kids in it. He died at home, the fact that he was able to stay out of nursing home was due to the willingness of his sons to come and stay with him until the very end (his one daughter did too, as she could, but she lives in California).

Anyway, once he died and things settled down, the kids decided to sell the house, but first they needed to empty it. They went through and gathered things they wanted -- and, since I had been good friends with him -- gave me some things too. Then they had St. Vincent de Paul come and take what the organization wanted of the furniture. The grand piano they sold. Then they took various things and piled them in the driveway and advertised on Facebook that they were free to any takers. I went over and picked up a couple things, but, being strongly reminded of the risks of accumulation, not very many.

After all that, a couple weeks's worth at least, the kids turned the house over to the realtor, who, for a fee, did a final clean-out. I watched them do that yestereday and today, several truckloads of things, more furniture, carpets, and almost everything one could think of. I hope they do a further winnowing and sell or donate more things, before making the landfull trips.

It made me realize how much stuff those of us privileged enough to own a home can accumulate given time enough. And I look around my own house and my own basement, and decided to start unloading things now, for a fair price if possible, for free if need be. But there is so much , residue from when the kids were little (and which the wife is not ready to let go) and so many other things, including, I must admit, scraps of wood from various projects of mine, and tools I have rarely used but "just had to have, just in case."

But what struck me more than anything else in this whole affair of my neighbor's passing is how much the value of things depends on the people who own them, that suddenly small treasures and bric-a-brac become nothing more than junk store items. At one point I was talking to the daughter and she suddenly became teary-eyed, saying she'd begun to realize her parents were really, truly, gone, and so was the life of the house.

So I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It's tough to realize that things of themselves are just that, things, and they will rarely matter as much to anyone else. And also how easy it is, if one stays put, to pile up things either because they might prove useful or are not longer useful and are too good to let go, and things that simply pile up because there's room in the basement.

So, like so many people, I have seriously resolved to let things go, even the one's that hurt to release, maybe especially those.

It won't be easy, but it would be right,