The late George Carlin was one of my favorite comedians. His classic routine, A Place for Your Stuff, is genius. While I am far from being a hoarder or even a minor pack rat (I have no problem throwing things away) after fourteen years in the same house I do seem to have collected a fair amount of “stuff”. However, it was only after the death of my mother last September that I began to view “stuff” in a completely new way.
My parents lived in my childhood home from their marriage in 1951 until about 2010, when my dad became wheelchair bound as a result of slowly advancing Parkinson’s disease. They traded in their dwelling for a handicapped accessible apartment and downsized their possessions considerably. (My mom also treated herself to new furniture, because, as she put it, she was “tired of living in the 70s”.) 
As Dad’s condition deteriorated, however, my sisters and I came to the realization that the constant care giving was taking a toll on Mom, both physically and mentally. Never long on patience, Dad’s physical incapacity and worsening dementia, led our mother to vacillate between fits of rage and utter despondency. My husband and I would make the 2 ½ – hour drive to their home at least once a month, partly to make sure that she hadn’t murdered him in his sleep. We used to joke, somewhat uncomfortably, that our son, who suffered from schizophrenia was sometimes on “suicide watch” while Grandma was on “homicide watch.” In order to help our mother better cope with her situation, we proposed that she and Dad make the move to an assisted living facility to a town in Illinois where my younger sister and I both live.
Unfortunately, however, assisted living didn’t suit my mom. It was expensive, the staff was overworked, and my mother who was still mentally and physically capable, was bored to tears. So, after a few months, our parents moved again, this time to another handicapped accessible apartment about 15 minutes away from both my sister and me.
This arrangement worked well until my father suffered a break in first one hip and then the other, a major surgery, and a stint in a nursing home. He rallied briefly, but eventually died just before Christmas in 2013.
Having never lived alone in her entire life (she married Dad at age 18 and moved directly from her parents’ home to start her married life) she was understandably nervous about being on her own. In February 2014 she moved in with my husband and me. Her only requests were that she be allowed to bring her sofa, her TV, her washer and dryer, and an antique desk that my father had had refinished for her. We repainted our son’s old room a lovely shade of rose and Mom happily arranged the few personal belongings that she brought with her into a cozy and comfortable space of her own.
At 81, she was amazingly healthy and alert. She and our dog became fast friends, sharing a morning cinnamon roll and watching CNN and Animal Planet. Until the last year of her life, she regularly drove herself on what I affectionately called the “little old lady circuit”: the bank, the hairdresser, Walgreen’s, and the grocery store. On Sundays, she would go to church with my sister and out for lunch afterward.
By 2017, Mom had begun to slow a bit, and voluntarily gave up her driver’s license. She began to have difficulty navigating the stairs and so we had a stair lift installed. My older sister treated the family to a Las Vegas vacation for Mom’s 85th birthday and although she often required a wheelchair, she still enjoyed playing the slots and took in a show by Boys II Men to celebrate.
By the summer of 2018, however, she began to complain of pain in her back, shoulders, and legs and mentioned, rather offhandedly, that the doctor was chastising her about how much weight she had lost. One morning she tried to get out of bed and her legs simply collapsed under her. On August 1, 2018 she was diagnosed with Stage 4, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma with a large tumor pressing on her spinal cord and cancer that had spread to her lungs. She died, just 6 weeks later, on September 13, 2018.
After the dust had settled, I began the slow and sad task of going through her things. Her room was orderly, and I was relieved but also a bit saddened that her possessions were so few. Some of the finds were gems: a photograph of my son and my dad that I had never seen before; a journal that my mother had kept for about a 10-year period when she was the age that I am now; a religious book in which she had been using a “Mega-Millions” Lotto ticket 
as a bookmark! My sisters and I divided the things that had sentimental value to each of us, but what to do with the rest?
There were things that Mom had saved that must have had sentimental value to her but that really meant nothing to me. With some nagging feelings of guilt, I sold some things on eBay and donated others. Most painful was throwing away some items that I knew that my mother had held dear, but which were in such bad condition that there was really no point in saving them. However, the entire process caused me to start looking at my own possessions in a whole new light.
I began to think of my own mortality and to consider whether the things that I was saving would really have any value to anyone after I was gone, or would they simply be “stuff” that someone else would have to deal with. As a result, I went on what became a brutal and relentless “purge”. My grandmother’s cedar chest, once stuffed to the gills with “keepsakes” (aka “junk”) dating back to my high school years, has been drastically culled to include mostly photographs and cards and letters from my closest friends (although there are a few fairly non-nonsensical items that I just couldn’t seem to throw away including my wisdom teeth and the bridal veil that I wore at my wedding to a man from whom I’ve now been divorced since 1993!).
What I’ve realized is that it isn’t really the “things” that bring me joy, but rather the memories that those things represent. There is they saying that “you can’t take it with you” when you die. While that is undoubtedly true for our material possessions, I think, perhaps that we can take our memories and experiences with us when we go, and that makes them the most precious possessions of all.
quietlyradical 