Memories

 As promised, here is a glimpse into what has been taking up a lot of my time recently. 

For the last few months my siblings and I have been getting together to go through our parent's house.  We are trying to get it ready to sell to Emily and Keiran by the first of the year.  My parents built the house in 1958 and lived there until their deaths, my father in 1990 and my mother this February.   They collected things from our childhoods, their interests, work, World War II and the Korean War, their parents, grandparents, sisters, aunts, and friends of  relatives.  There is a lot of stuff.  Sometimes we find a treasure, sometimes trash.  Sometimes a Christmas miracle, like when there was a missing piece from a Santa puzzle that was in an upstairs closet.  The missing piece was found in a box of stuff in the basement garage. Sometimes we find things that we don't know anything about.  Since it was saved, should we continue to try to save it?  Sometimes I wish I could ask Mama, "why was this special," why did she keep it.  But if I don't know why it was special why am I keeping it?  Will I just be burdening my children and grandchildren with things they have even less connection to?  Should I expect them to treasure something that has meaning to me but not to them.  Letting go is hard.  But our houses are full, our lives are full, and our hearts are full of all the love that we received from our parents.  The problem is my mind is full of the chaos that I am trying to organize and make space for. I have tried to set boundaries, as much stuff has to leave my house as comes in.  But I haven't been able to keep up with enough stuff leaving.  It is easy to bring home one or two things from a trip, from a thrift store, from a gift and incorporate that into the house.  But how do you incorporate 100's and 1000's of things?  Is it my home then or a shrine.  We all work through it in our own ways.  We all have our own struggles.  But we have been able to share our time and memories with each other and that helps.  There is still more to go, more closets, drawers, cabinets, shelves.  More stuff.  And hopefully, more good memories.