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What We Leave Behind

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What do we do with the stuff our parents left behind? And what about our own stuff? A year ago I wrote a post on this website about cleaning out my parents’ house of more than fifty years (a condensed digest of an ongoing series on my other blog). I’m still at it. Because I’m living in the house, there’s no sense of urgency. And yet, as I consider options for what’s next for me, I’m held back by all the minutia that isn’t mine, from an overstock of paper clips to an antique organ, from nuts and nails to my father’s enormous desk.

A friend wrote about cleaning out her mother’s house after she died—that generation of savers, oh my—and of the saved bits and pieces of her own life.I often write the word “excavations” on my “things to do” list, or a I use this phrase “I am a miner” to inspire my efforts. I couldn’t help be fascinated (and somewhat repelled) by all the little boxes, jars and containers full of doodads, screws, & miscellaneous parts that your family saved. I went through the same thing too at my mom’s. She had saved dozens of snus (snuff) cans from her father, filled with every screw, nail, bolt, curtain hanger, drape hook, and carpet tack of his, as well as my dad’s stuff in baby food jars, cat food cans (the last cat died in 1966) and cigar boxes (his father smoked cigars, and he always brought home empty ones from “The Club”). But, I think maybe I had it somewhat easier going through some of those things compared to what you are faced with now, because my mom moved to a different house twenty years ago, and she was an obsessive organizer and labeler (probably the librarian thing).

Now I’m making myself face the harder stuff, things with family memories. I whittled four boxes of antique piano music from my grandmother down to one. Some of it was so old and shabby, I had to throw it out, but I took two boxes of it to local antique/collectible shops. But I can’t keep it all and I tell myself “four minus three equals one—at least I’m trying.” [Then I set to working] on a list of books (about theater and the New York stage) to offer my local theater company. I have saved six books for myself and I hope that they will accept about sixteen. My mom loved the theater.

On the horizon, waiting for me, are boxes and boxes of 78 rpm records. That may be a challenge. The thrift stores won’t take those. I might put them off for later. I actually remember some of those old records from when I was really little.

One of the hardest things about all of this is that I am recognizing my own hoarding instinct. I’ve saved many of the same things. It scares me to think that I might pass all of this stuff (or my own treasures) on to my daughter. But I know to a certain extent that I will. She tells me not to worry about it.

LV

They Left Us Everything: Is It Clutter or Memories?

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It’s the ultimate spring cleaning, and I’m not talking spiderwebs and dust. I’m cleaning out the overflowing basement room that has been storing the ephemera of my parents lives for the nearly sixty years they lived here.

When my parents migrated across the country in 1946, after the war, they must have brought only what would fit in the boxy Chevy. Camping gear, a few clothes; maybe precious wedding gifts, some hand-me-down kitchen items, my mother’s typewriter. The rest was probably shipped in my uncle’s Army footlocker (which is still in the basement). After thirteen years and three children, when they built the house I am living in now, their collection had grown exponentially. Sixty years after that, well, nearly everything I need I can find in some cupboard, drawer, or box. As children of the Great Depression, and my mother’s family’s hardscrabble existence even before then, they were both keepers. Of everything.

I started in the back corner of the room during the dark days of the second Covid winter. I cremated and scattered the remains of one of my mother’s unrealized crafting dreams: dried flowers and leaves, boxes of them pressed between paper towels and the sheets of newspaper or pages of magazines. I created a memorial craft for my sisters for Christmas with batik trials and tiny beach collectibles, and emptied boxes of more beach stones, shells, and driftwood into the memorial garden I created years ago. I threw out dried up homemade fabric dyes, snapshots of people I didn’t know, old wrapping paper, boxes too small to save. I found homes for fabric and for crocheted doilies and granny square afghans my Granny made. I took ratty blankets—stored in barrels kept from the 1960 move—to the animal shelter. I recycled, donated, and did my part to populate the landfill.

I saved children’s artwork, letters my sisters and I wrote home from camp and college and first homes, old family photos, a box of remembered cookie cutters, our childhood play dress-up clothes, the doll collection, and war memorabilia to explore with my sisters. On task for one day, when the oldest sister came across the country for a visit, we didn’t nearly finish what I had saved for us to do together.

One day this house will be sold, and the prospect of waiting for that time to come and the burden of having to do it at a point in my life that I may not have the energy for it, has weighed physically on my shoulders. Headway has been made. And there is so much more. Stories have been written and photographs taken to store in the Cloud; someday I will make a family book.

My mother said she wanted to get the house cleaned out, but I’m not sure getting it gone was her goal. One can only speculate what going through it meant to her: did she want to put hands on it again and remember? Did she want to tell us stories? Did she want to make sure it was all labeled? Did she want to tell us or leave a note about whom she wanted to have things? What I know is, it was maddening to those of us who tried to do it with her, particularly when she could no longer see. We were impatient. She told few stories (or we never got to the things with stories and now they are lost), and nothing left the house. I wonder if wanting/needing to get it done is why she stayed alive so long. And if not being able to face it is why she stayed in the house, stuck here by stuff.

In hindsight, when she asked over the years if we wanted something, we should have said, “Yes! Thank you for saving it for me.” Then taken it from her hands—off her hands. It would have made her feel vital, one last piece of good parenting affirmed: she kept the treasures for us. We were then free to do with it what we wanted. Maybe she labeled so many things for one of us or the grandchildren because she knew we would say no if she asked if we wanted it. Labeling things and returning them to box, barrel, or shelf kept her heart from being broken.

What to say about this process? It’s both blessing and curse, burden and bonanza. It’s a reliving of days past, remembering a heart-full of people gone, physical proof of a mother who loved her children well—and who had a life before and beyond us.

After months of cleansing, I can almost imagine we can save the next generation from the task. The million dollar question: what will be the loss to them?

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You can read more words (in ten parts, so far) and view the photographic evidence on my blog at writingdownthestory.com. Search “Excavating a home.”