Memories are hard to get rid of

 I have talked to a number of people recently who are running into the same problem we had a few years back. Getting rid of things, the older generation left us. My mother-in-law passed about five years ago, and she had collected a great deal of sentimental and other goods. We did not have room for it and none of the grandkids wanted it. So, we still have some of it, some of it we gave away, but it was not easy.

Our parents, were savers, having learned in the lean times of war and the Great Depression to treasure what they owned. We are consumers. Together, we will leave behind houses jammed with mahogany dining room sets, silver platters, crystal figurines and all manner of things that their kids and grandkids don’t want. Grandma’s massive China cabinet is not going to fit into the smaller homes our children and grandchildren are living in today.

So, when a grandparent or a parent dies or downsizes what’s the result? An endless series of garage sales and trips to the landfill. An exhausting cycle of cluttering and decluttering. Because, let’s be honest, we all already have too much stuff as it is.

How we treat the stuff of past generations – and how we divest our own belongings to the people we love – offers a lesson in what we value too much and perhaps don’t value enough. What matters in the end? What endures? That’s the challenge: what to take – and what to leave behind – when you close the door on your parents’ home for the last time.

Sorting, culling, and tossing all that “accumulation of life,” is hard, there’s an emotional challenge to dealing with the treasure and trash that your parents leave behind. It’s not easy to throw away these pieces of them.

In Canada, there is The Association of ProfessionalOrganizers with over 600 members ready to help with the handwringing over those cherished knickknacks. Most of us want this task to be done properly, respectfully and fairly (also cheaply and quickly) while ghosts hover. The whole process shakes awake buried sorrows, sibling rivalries, and family Sons and daughters who have faced the chore describe wrestling with how to do this, if it was just junk, it would not be so hard. But possessions have meaning; they tell stories and reinforce our memories.

We still have things in boxes that my mother-in-law left that have not been opened. It’s just so easy to be immobilized by what to do with her things because there is the fear that if we got rid of their stuff, we could never find them again.