It All Just Stuff
2009
My wife and I are going through the same thing right now. Her grandparents and my grandmother both just moved from their homes to an assisted living facility in their home towns. This has been difficult for both of us but more so for her.
The reason it is difficult for her is because we went to their auction this weekend. Auctions are one of the worst things for people to deal with when their loved ones need to sell stuff for whatever reason. There are strange people everywhere. They are pawing over the chair that grandpa tickled you in when you were three, looking into the cabinet you hid in when it stormed, basically violating your most personal, private spaces.
When you see this act of pillaging and plundering it is hard to keep in mind and remember that it is all just stuff. That chair is probably just like hundreds of other chairs, some with memories that are probably not as good. That cabinet, again, probably just like other cabinets that, in other homes, may have been were the bills were kept or the bottle of whiskey was squirreled away.
I’m not saying that its not alright for my wife to feel sad about the auction or to be upset with the people who seem to be trampling over her memories, heck, it even made me a little sad and I haven’t known them my whole life, I think its normal and a little healthy. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t anchor our lives to the stuff that surrounds us and surrounds our loved ones. When we do that and that stuff is yanked away, it yanks away the support system holding us up.
In the end, stuff is stuff, it comes and goes. The memories that go with the stuff are created by the people, not the stuff itself. Memories are forever and its the memories that should be the anchors of our lives. You can sell and destroy the stuff but you can never, for any amount of money, sell or destroy your memories.
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