On Moving On
People should move every five years or so. That way the home gets purged of excess baggage. It is best to move far enough away that you can’t easily make multiple trips, so you’re not tempted to go back for that last box of knickknacks or the garden gnome lurking in the shrubs. But any move at all helps keep stuff at bay.And under no circumstances should you ever allow a storage shed into your life.
Alas, I have a storage shed the size of Alpena. During her visit in June, my Australian daughter sifted through her corner of the shed rescuing precious items for further storage Down Under. What she left for me to contend with are photo albums, diaries, sketchpads, and plenty of locale-specific souvenirs. Things people from my generation regard as precious.
It knocks the wind out of me to see photo albums in the trash. But I get it. First of all, now that such things can be digitized, there is no longer a need to let this stuff take up precious space in the home.
But even the digital versions aren’t really necessary. When I am gone, I will take with me my memories of those who went before. My grandparents. My parents. My husbands (I’ve outlived two of them). The people who come after me will care little—except my children, who will remember me and my parents for a while. When my kids are gone—I’ll really be gone.
That’s just the way things are. Unless we are celebrated by society at large, for whatever reason, and get our names in history books or enduring films, we will all fall by the wayside. The clinging to all the photo albums in the world won’t counteract that fact. I am no more or less important than my neighbor or co-worker, no more needy than the person sitting next to me in a support group— even if it feels like I am the center of the universe.
Now, if I could cling to this idea—the idea that we come and go and it makes barely a ripple in the ocean of life—maybe I could just relax and enjoy what I have left. I want to revel in people rather than stuff. And do so without too much regard for the enduring mark we do or do not make (as long as we don’t hurt anybody. That’s a pretty solid boundary for me). I want to shed photo albums and live in the present. Play music. Dance naked—well, you get the idea.
When my husband and I came here from New Mexico, we spent a week packing a moving van. We were exhausted. The truck was mightily full. So, we left our antique piano in the driveway of our old home. I thought I’d miss it. But I haven’t.
Still, we managed to bring a lifetime of stuff. We added fourteen more years of Arkansas stuff, and then my husband departed this planet, leaving me here to deal with the fallout.
I’m moving. Because I can’t properly care for our home on my own. But first I must clear out the stupid storage shed. Including everything my husband ever wrote. And, it turns out, every love letter I ever wrote to him—and there were many.
I don’t know, yet, what I’ll do with the written record of our love. Maybe it will float away in a sea of tears. Maybe I’ll just leave it in the driveway.