Do I move his bike on or not?
Just one more thing to decide
keep, donate, sell…
Will I use it?
Could I use it?
Would someone enjoy it more?
Where’s the right place to donate it?
At what point does stuff become a burden
At what point is stuff just stuff that
I’ve been too lazy to go through
too afraid to be without
too concerned about where it goes?
If I was crushed by a meteor
would those behind curse me for
the mess they had to clean up?
It’s time to let things go
To not try to fill holes with stuff
To not let fear turn me into a hoarder
To trust in just enough
and to know what that is.
Yes! 🙂
Thanks for an important word. I loved this piece because it rang true in my experience as well. When is stuff just stuff. Probably most of the time. Love to you, Barbara
Honey, if you are crushed by a meteor, won’t all your stuff be crushed along with you? When my friend committed suicide, I kept everything on a Linda Shrine. Her half eaten box of cereal, her toothbrush, her books, her blanket, her jacket. I had her clothes altered so I could wear them! I vowed to preserve her leather backpack forever. Now all that is left is her well worn backpack that I use everyday. The other things left when the time was right. I’m thinking I will continue using her backpack until I die, if I can keep it patched together! One never knows. That is my experience with the things of our loved ones.
We’re trying! But it really is difficult. A few years back I finally tossed out a box of photos–the pictures of friends’s children (many now grown). It seemed so wrong to be cavalier with those things… I’m sentimental, and perhaps the Army childhood left its mark–“Three moves equals one fire” was the applicable saying. I read with longing about family heirlooms found in attics, a lifetime of letters preserved and donated to an archive, a treasure passed down for generations–let alone a house continuously occupied by one lineage. Ah, well. Yet it remains easier to discard things than to dismiss memories that are often painful and sad. We trudge on and do the best we can…
I found my parents’ love letters when I had to go through their estate, 200 letters in all. Dad’s were kept in his old army mail bag from WWII and Mom’s in a shoe box. I have read some of Dad’s up until Nov. 9, 1949. I quit because the grief became so unbearably heavy I could not feel my own separateness from it. They are still here and I can read them anytime. But I don’t. I know the story already. Eugene loves Cricket always. Cricket loves Eugene always. I am here because of it: that always love. I am.
I have been doing this dostadning since Dad died October 18, 2004. I do not want my son to have to throw away his childhood memoribilia as I did at a most painful wretched time in my adult life. I empty the Stuff in my attic routinely until there is very little at all left, just Dad’s baby cradle made of walnut and Mom’s feather bolster she and I made of Grandmother Bagby’s handplucked feathers, Granddaddy Bagby’s cane. Brett’s tricycle and some graduate school work I plan to revisit some day when life gets too boring for me to enjoy the present moment. I doubt that day will ever come.
As Joseph said so many times, ‘ I’ve looked back into the past and there is nothing there. It’s all gone.’ Of course this was followed by much of his famous howling and cackling laughter. I love to hear him in my body now.
I am studying quantum healing. The space inside us is full of love already. I do not have to clutter that beautiful place where I go to become one with God and All That Is, Dad, Mom, Joseph, Jesus all the unnamed ones. We like the wide open spaces inside and out !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
Love and power and courage and clarity to you my dear Barbara Sliter.
I love all the sharing and the diversity of how you do it.
Hugs to everyone.