Memories

So many changes in the last few months for me.  I am moving and morphing into this final quarter of life with some certainties and some uncertainties, but such is life.  Today I am trying to get my house in order. I thought about saying back in order, but it’s never really been in complete order. I am ok with that.  We had some water damage to our hardwood floors, and everything had to be moved into a POD, all electronics and musical instruments landed in our carpeted bedroom.  We left town for a week and returned to chaos.  My thinking - what a perfect time to get rid of some things and allow for our space to breathe.

I had to empty the China cabinet, the buffet, and the dry sink, all filled with my mother’s treasures collected throughout her travels as a military wife.  Plates, my mother loved beautiful plates, oh and crystal.  As I carefully wrapped her beautiful Spain Venecia goblets and candle holders and placed them in the donation box, my heart hurt.  I felt as if I was committing some type of betrayal of the beautiful woman who took such joy in “junking” around Belgium and Germany.  I began to wonder, what is it that we are grieving when we carefully wrap and box these items that were such a part of our childhood and adult lives.  I am pretty sure my mother be fine with what I am doing, so it is obviously an expectation I am placing upon myself.

 Times have changed a lot.  I can remember as a little girl and a teenager thinking, I will decorate my home with all this beautiful furniture and all these delicate trinkets and china (and I have).  I have my mother’s beautiful 12 place setting of Lorenz Hutschenreuther Revere china.  It’s exquisite. I could not bear to give it away to strangers, so it remains in the buffet cabinet it has always lived in.  I say times have changed, because I have tried to give a lot of my mother’s things to younger family members, but it’s not something most are interested in.  I understand that, and I envy it in a way.  My beautiful daughter in law did find a place for some crystal drink ware she knew she and my son would enjoy.  But, for the most part, younger people today are more attached to experiences than things.  Not a bad thing.

I am sure that I will eventually downsize to a much smaller home and make a move closer to my grandchildren.  That is my motivation at this point.   But that doesn’t mean that this is easy.  I asked the question earlier, what is it we are grieving in this process?  I believe it is the experiences attached to those items.  The china my mother used for every holiday meal, the hand -blown Murano glass clown mom purchased on our family vacation in Italy, the dry sink and marble top end tables picked up at some flea market in Belgium we frequented every weekend.  So many memories.  So - I hold onto the memories that will always be there, with or without the tangible reminders.  Knowing that what I hold in my hand and what I hold in my heart are forever connected but it’s what in the heart that’s important.   You can break a piece of crystal, or let a piece of silver tarnish beyond repair, but you can never lose the memories that guide and shape your life.