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July 29, 2007
You Can't Take It With You
An older lady in my neighborhood died 19 days ago. This is how her curb looks tonight:
Actually, it may be worse now since Kevin took this photo around 7:30 this evening and it is now 11:02.
Looking at these things makes me sad. I didn’t know the woman. I saw her walking her dog each night and she spoke to Ashley a few times, but we didn’t know her.
What makes me sad is how valuable our things are to us, but how meaningless they are to other people.
I am sure she chose that couch with much thought; thinking about how well it would go with the curtains and other things in her house. She probably spent many hours sleeping on that mattress. There looks to be a lot of fabric in her Herbie; she must have had some feeling for it or why would she have kept it?
When I was looking through my mom’s scrapbooks, I thought to myself, she is the one who put these books together and she is the only one who knows the meaning why she kept certain newspaper articles, cards or photos. Yes, I can ask her about each thing, but I would never remember everything and some things aren’t important to her any longer. We threw some things in the bin and shredded others. I believe her exact words were, “It just doesn’t matter anymore.”
It’s heartbreaking, but true. Our things matter to us and they will hopefully matter to our children, but are their children really going to care about these mementoes? Should we expect them to hold on to things, make room in their homes for things they really don’t want and are keeping just because?
Now, I’m not accusing this lady’s family of throwing out very personal items that she dearly loved. I’m just wondering, when I die, what will my kids throw away? What will they keep? Will they say to themselves, Mom sat on this couch, so I can’t get rid of it or will they do what these people did and kick it to the curb in less than a month?
Posted by tami at July 29, 2007 11:34 PM
Comments
Tami,
I struggle with this everyday. My mom has become a collector of many things from puzzles to jewlery, to jewlery boxes. It has really become overwhelming. I tell her all the time when she dies i'm just gonna throw it away, I know that sounds harsh, but the things I treasure the mose about my mom are simple things like her puppy dog she has had since she was a child, or the dresser she got from her grandmother. You want to hold on to everything when someone passes, but it's just impossible. I'm sure they have plenty of pictures of that lady sitting on the couch.
Posted by: Deanna at July 30, 2007 8:58 AM
My maternal grandmother passed away when I was 18. She and my grandfather (who passed away when I was 8) had already bought their burial plots years before, but since her death was sudden and unexpected, it fell to her four children to purchase her coffin and pay for the funeral. Her house had to be sold, as well as about 90% of her possessions. It devastated me to see her belongings spread out on her lawn in the yard sale. I know it's not rational, but I just wanted to scream at everyone who bought her things. I know they were just objects, but to me, those things represented her whole life, things that were very precious to her and I felt like the people that bought them didn't realize or understand what sentimental value they held for us. I wish we could have kept her things, but it just wasn't practical as no one in the family had room for all her stuff. Now I feel as if there are little pieces of her spread around out there, sitting in other peoples' homes who have no idea what treasures they hold.
Posted by: Stacey at July 30, 2007 11:48 AM
Gosh, this is a difficult one! My mother was quite sure that things are not important and it was silly to hang on to 'things' because they do not mean anything in themselves. However, I have some furniture that I have lived with since childhood and have only just reorganised several rooms so that I can keep a Welsh dresser, I really don't want to get rid of it. However, there are too many chairs and they are going to the local auction room - tomorrow! It s not easy though.
I also have a scrap book that was put together by a relative in the 1800's. That is fascinating to me now, so I would keep the scrap books, they will be of interest in years to come.
The best part of all are the memories - no-one can take those away from you and you can relive them at any time and in any place, magic!
Posted by: Miss L at July 30, 2007 1:20 PM
Tam,
I have alot of stuff myself as you know and we all attach ourselves to things. The older I get I don't think material things matter as much as memories! When on my tombstone someday anyone will look at, it's not the day I was born or the day I died that matters as much as the little mark in between them that matters most of all. To me, it's not as important as what have I collected but whose life have I made a difference in? What memories will I leave them with? Will they look back on me with a fond happy memory? I sure hope so. And if by chance there's something in my ole junk they want to keep, that's cool! Memories are a wonderful place to go to. I really like my stuff....but LOVE my memories!
Posted by: Becky at August 1, 2007 1:08 PM