|
Recently, I helped my
ninety-year-old mother and father move from their home into a
retirement home. It was a bittersweet time, yet they are both
in
good health and their new place is lovely, even resort-like.
But going through a long
lifetime of things (they’ve been married sixty-nine
years)…
Most traumatic about the move
were the decisions they (but mostly Mom) were forced to make about
their
possessions. My sister and I would hold up a pretty vase or a dress
pattern or a book and say, “Do you want to keep this?” Or
sell it at the estate sale? Or give it away?
Many times Mom could say yes or
no without much thought, but as we dug deeper into her life treasures,
her answers became couched in “Well . . . maybe Amber would like that,
or maybe I could call up some theater that might like to have it.”
It became very important for Mom
to know that her things were used well, appreciated, and even beyond
that, that they had new life beyond her. We were amazed at the way she
found a local high school to take her fabric scraps, the sewing
patterns, her yarn, and old sewing magazines. And the theater
department at the university was thrilled with her vintage clothing
(most beautifully hand sewn), with matching shoes, hats, and bags. But
honestly, it complicated the moving process to find a good home for
their things.
As the dining hutch was cleared
out, the closets were emptied, the items to move were boxed up, we all
started seeing how the things that were treasured were not the things
that had the highest monetary value, but those things that had the
highest memory value. A music box, with a porcelain
girl on top that played “Happy Birthday” brought back a swell of
birthday memories. A postal weight set that had belonged to my father’s
father brought back images of a myriad of letters written and posted. A
hand-sewn dress brought back the occasion it was worn, and a piece of
jewelry prompted, “Your dad gave that to me on our fortieth
anniversary.”
When our kids were asked what
items they would like of Grandpa and Grandma’s, there was no mad dash
for a 1940’s vase that might have value, but rather for the small items
that were a part of their visits together. Our son only asked for a
blue candy dish that sat on a corner table between the couches and
always held sweets. The value of each item was measured by the memories
it elicited. We found that the way to honor our parents’ lives was to
honor them by appreciating the memories. And
listening. And truly caring. More than once I opened my computer and
transcribed the wonderful stories they told.
|
The difference between males and
females came up during this process as Dad was ready to give his World
War II uniforms to Goodwill, and my sister and I both yelled out, “No!”
For even if he was willing to let go of this large piece of his past,
we were not. At least not yet. And so my sister got his 1942 Air Force
cadet uniform that he was married in, and I got his captain’s uniform
that he was wearing when he came home to Mom after being in the South
Pacific for over two years.
It’s an odd thing, rummaging
through the objects of a life. What we keep, what we cherish, and what
we set free is incongruous and even mystifying. Yet coming home from
helping them move into this next phase of their very well-lived lives,
I look at my own collection of things
with new eyes—while making room for the items I took home from their
house. All will eventually have to be gone through when we reach the
time to let them go.
We are all accumulating evidence
of our lives. What can be relinquished? What should
be relinquished? To move on from one phase of life to the next always
demands reflection, hard decisions, and sacrifice. But it comes down to
this: what really matters?
We all know the answer to that.
What matters are the memories, the times spent together, the moments of
ordinary life that become extraordinary in hindsight. What matters is
the loved shared in the past, and the love shared now,
in this moment. What matters is the Lord God who is the keeper of time
and the giver of all things.
“And now these three remain:
faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (I Cor. 13:13
NIV).
|
