Letting Go
When my siblings and I were growing up our parents chose to move every 18 months. Sometimes it was just down the block or across town. Other years it would be to a different city. Most of our belongings would end up in cardboard boxes that our father would pick up from behind grocery stores. In fact, I may still have a few of these boxes stating Sunkist Navel Oranges as the original content.
To say this was unsettling for a child would be an understatement, but we went along with the transitions because moving was just part of our family culture. When my brother, sister and I look back on this disruptive portion of our youth, we are, in hindsight, bewildered by this behavior, but there’s not much we can do about it now.
From my perch at 74, I can see how the constant moving created a propensity in me to hold onto items, memories, and people I’ve been close to in ways that are not the cultural norm. These tendencies are not particularly healthy for me (see Tethers). As I age, I find myself with two very divergent mindsets.
The first one has me thinking that it doesn’t matter if I’ve surrounded myself with “stuff”. At this point in time these tangible items give me comfort, remind me of past connections, and have more than sentimental value. While I’m living, each object has a story, a personal connection that allows me to reminisce and maintain that special connection. Once I’m gone, I won’t know (or care) whether these pieces end up at the dump, are given away, or perhaps find their way onto eBay. The emotional value I instill in them now will have evaporated and the stories will only matter to a very few.
The second, very different mindset, is that I can give them away to friends, relatives, or perhaps museums if the piece has enough intrinsic value. Downsizing is the word many of us older folks use to explain the process of unencumbering ourselves. There is a wonderful feeling associated simplifying one’s life, disconnecting from the past and sweeping out the clutter in both the physical aspects of a home and the detritus in my head as well. Perhaps giving away the story along with the piece will allow the new owner to form their own connections both to me and my past.
Neither one of these options is particularly easy to accomplish. At first glance it would seem that just leaving everything in place would be the simplest solution since I wouldn’t need to really do much. Choosing what should go and what should stay is difficult work and most days I don’t have the energy to make those kinds of decisions. On the other hand, there is a burden associated with all of these tangible objects, a caretaking heaviness that I can palpably feel as I look around our home. And regardless of the emotional attachment, there is a sense of relief when I’ve found a second home for a piece that I’ve imbued with a personal value.
I admit that when I do allow an object to leave our home there is an instant regret. Perhaps I should call it “Giver’s Remorse”. I feel that something is missing from my environment. Most often this manifests itself as a melancholy that lingers for a few days before my more pragmatic side kicks in and that sense of relief takes over. There are times I’ve asked if the recipient would be willing to take a photograph of where they have placed the object and send it to me. Knowing that my personably valuable item has found a new home and is cared for is incredibly cathartic.
After all of this handwringing and uncertainty, my feeling is that giving most of these pieces away to those who will value them in some manner is probably the most reasonable approach. It will, no doubt, be emotionally wrenching but at least I’ll have had a part in what happens.
About a year or two ago I package up my great-grandmother’s mantle clock to share it with my sister. I kept a different mantle clock from a different great-grandmother though it was clearly important to spread out our shared family history. I had had the mechanism restored so it displayed an accurate time. Every seven days I would wind the clock and listen to it chime the hours, much as my great-grandmother had heard. For both my sister and me it was a connection to someone we never knew, but we have her DNA running through our veins.
To end this week’s offering, I would like to mention a friend of mine who lost his home in the 1991 fire that consumed over 3,000 houses in the Berkeley and Oakland hills. He and his wife had minutes to evacuate, grabbing just a small handful of precious items before the fire engulfed the entire neighborhood. 98% of the types of objects I’ve alluded to here were gone in a flash, leaving only ashes and disconnected memories.
Years later I asked him about the impact of losing everything in an instant, but he was remiss to discuss the past and instead wanted to focus on the present. I certainly understood that. And even though it may sound very odd, in me there remains a small increment of envy. Not that I would ever want to lose everything in the manner that he did, but there was an instantaneous unburdening. The precious objects that filled his life were vaporized and he was suddenly free.
So in the end, I have no desire to see our home and all its wonderful contents disappear in a moment’s notice. But perhaps we will begin the process of allowing others to enjoy our items and their various stories that have given us so much pleasure over the years. And then to find our own sense of freedom.
This is quite a personal bit of ruminating. I remember those Sunkist boxes. You could find as many as you needed and they were free.
As you suggest in your narrative the point of friction for us is the trauma of our past that begs for release/relief. I too hang onto objects that remind me of a past time, of a self that remains yet a part of me but has been superseded by the older conscious self of the present. I think that “matter matters” that the emotion which ties us to objects is a sign of our belonging to this world, that this belonging must be bitter and sweet. I love the touch of things. Surface texture, the play of light upon a form, etc..
Is it not Ok to love this world? And also to grieve, to be sad for what we could not help, for the kid that was buffeted about by circumstance? It is reasonable to conclude that every kid who has ever lived knows what that is and was like. But we will carry on! At least that is my intention.
I sometimes wonder if our ancient ancestors would hold onto objects that reminded them of adventures or members of the tribe who had gone before. Is this propensity to connect with the inanimate an innate tendency? Through archeology, we know that many people were buried with personal belongings that they would be able to enjoy in the afterlife, so they must have been important during their lifetimes as well.