That’s the next step on the agenda isn’t it? Going through forty-six years of accumulated possessions, mementos, pictures, stuff. More than forty-six years when you think about my childhood things, my family’s things. I was going to say family heirlooms but they have no value to anyone outside the family, like my grandmother’s diaries dating from 1948 to 1988 when she died. They are a treasure trove of insight into the person I only thought of as grandma. ‘Grandma’ comes alive as Eva with her mammoth washes, her eight cents for stamps, and her trip to see Dr. Martin Luther King speak in Cambridge. Someone else would toss them in the trash after skimming for any money hidden in the pages. It’s a thing, money hidden in books. When I cleaned out my grandparents’ home there was indeed several dollars secreted among volumes of H. Rider Haggard and May Sarton among others.
I started going through things a few months ago and relegated some to the basement to be donated/recycled/trashed. The easy stuff. The obvious things. Like a collection of old light bulbs, tools I can’t identify (nor figure out how to use); an oddly large collection of old umbrellas. Bowling shoes, old pillows, sheets sized for beds I no longer own. Coffee cups. So many coffee cups. I think coffee cups get together with other coffee cups and have baby coffee cups. I have enough coffee cups to open three diners.
I need to sell my house in the next year or so. It’s too big for one person. There’s too much property to take care of and my practical side says it’s the right thing to do. I should find a nice, low maintenance condo or one story house that will see me into my golden years. The other side of me, though, does not want to sell this house, ever. I am surprised. Bruce and I lived in several apartments and three houses over the last forty years and I always saw them as part living accommodation and part investment. Still, this house – every room, every bit of the gardens, was renovated completely and lovingly by both of us over the last twenty years. I can remember the discussions about paint color and tile and bathroom fixtures, often somewhat heated discussions. It’s not always easy to choose when two people with very different tastes and very strong opinions try to update a room. But we did, with compromises and maybe a few comments about someone’s pedestrian taste. I still hate the coffee table, honey.
I feel like our very spirits are infused into every floor joist, rafter, window frame and bit of drywall. So, even though I know it’s the right thing to do, it is more difficult than I thought it would be. I’ve looked at a couple of places that are really nice – convenient, easy to take care of; places I can imagine myself living in. But when it comes to the part where I’d have to put my house up for sale, I panic. How can I sell our house? How can I leave a house where it feels like Bruce still inhabits every room? Oh, that’s the place where he fell over and lost his glasses. That’s the bell in the screen porch that he dinged for cocktail hour. The closet that he hung his clothes in. The house, where if I just listen long enough, I’ll be able to hear him singing (badly) on the treadmill downstairs or hear the door slam (he could never quietly shut a door) from the garage, or the kitchen having a heart to heart with the cat.
Regardless, I still need to get rid of at least some of this ‘stuff.’ So I’ll be ready when I’m ready. So no one in my family will have to sort through the million photos I’ve collected or the greeting cards Bruce gave me (I saved every one). Or my high school year book. Or Bruce’s. Or my Yogi Bear spoon and personalized cereal bowl my mother sent away for, or the plastic diamond Bruce won for me in a claw machine at a carnival forty five years ago. Or the sewing kit that my mother-in-law gave me even though I don’t sew; the concert tickets stubs for Aerosmith the Allman Brothers, the Stones, the Boss; the program for my dance recital when I was four (I was a cuddly duck in case you wondered).
I could spend another thousand words detailing all these things that mean nothing to anybody but me. I will get rid of them…eventually. Maybe not today. Oh, wait, I just found my Camp Fire Girl beanie. And my Pleasure Island map. And a photo of my dad making a goofy face. Yeah, maybe later.
J. Gardner Hurd 