Purge Surge

So. Much. Stuff.

When we put our house up for sale, we were told to clear it out for showing, to leave nothing smaller than a bread loaf on any surface.  Each day, after brushing my teeth, I'd pack away the toothbrush holder -- a plastic black box with holes -- just in case someone was interested in wandering through our house that day.  We were to "give people an opportunity to imagine themselves living there," with no remnants of lives lived there before.  Even lives with good dental hygiene, apparently.

To vacate living space, we gave items to the Salvation Army or sold them online.  We packed up books, CDs and VHS tapes.  We gave away the shelves on which these things were stored.  We gave away couches (yes, couchES...plural noun), we gave away dressers, we gave away desks.  I gave away one grand piano to my son, paying for its shipment to Montana.

And I gave away my grandmother's iron bed, a three-quarter sized hulk-of-a-thing that  I had personally cleaned and repainted when I was a teenager.  We'd had a custom-sized mattress made for our daughter to use with the frame.  I had notified my children that I had no intention of carting, across the country, belongings that they wanted but couldn't take right away. Either they accepted them now, or they were tossed. My daughter declined the bed.  I had no use for it.  My grandmother's bed, given away.

I realized I was the end: the last one to have a linear connection to these things. My kids did not want these items: they hadn't eaten cookies served on particular plates, or visited the family homestead where these earthy treasures had first been collected.  Purchased or handmade, these things were used, mended, and reused until they had become iconic.  They were the triggers for stories, links to a family's past.  As I pulled things to the curb, I said aloud "it stops with me."

What is interesting is the ordinariness of these things: a cobalt blue pitcher with matching glasses that belonged to my grandmother is still among the bric-a-brac currently in storage, waiting for us to get a residence.  The set is beautiful, but not very useful: the pitcher's cracked, and the white sailboats painted on the glassware are rubbing off.  It is shelved for show.  I've heard the story that the set was some kind of premium received with the purchase of detergent or perhaps S&H Green Stamps.  Will the things I buy at Bed, Bath & Beyond today become the priceless relics of tomorrow?  Lord, don't let me burden my children with that!

My husband has labeled me the least sentimental person he knows (he has had to teach me a little nursery-style rhyme to remember our wedding anniversary).  But there are some things I cherish because my own mortality is minimized by their existence: the people who first owned and used them linger with us still just because this stuff is in my hands.  Given away, we all stop.  I am the end.

And that leaves me with only the next step forward as an option.