I was moving a lot less stuff

Moving children is simple. They don’t have much stuff and honestly, packing up someone else is easier than packing up yourself. Upon graduation from Auburn and becoming engaged my daughter moved to be closer to her fiancè, look for a teaching job and begin her life as an independent person. This year I am packing up my house and headed to a new place, to be with my husband, as we begin a new chapter in his ministry. As was my daughter, I am looking for a teaching job. The biggest differences between her move and mine is my age and the amount of stuff I have.

As I gather my boxes, it has become increasingly obvious that I am a hoarder of family heirlooms. The value of my heirlooms is in the eyes of the beholder. in other words, I have a lot of junk that was really important to my grandmother, my mother and myself, all independent of each others treasures. After my mother died in 1967 every piece of paper that was important to her as a high schooler, every wedding card, baby gift card, every brochure of every trip she took, and every correspondence to and from her hospital bed was put into three matching suitcases that bear her initials. When I got married, I took the suitcases along with a large blue metal footlocker that contained art projects from elementary school, high school memories, and college souvenirs. When my grandmother died I became the self appointed keeper of her wedding cards, birth certificates, travel memorabilia and I appropriately placed these items in the suitcase she packed when she visited our house. Finally, up on my father’s death I discovered yet another suitcase containing more of my mother’s memorabilia from their marriage and the birth of my older sister.

In addition, I have 3 very cool photo albums from my father’s family dating back to the 1800’s.

This old fella is my great-great-great-great-grandfather on my father’s side.

Below are more relatives from yesteryear.

Are you counting? That is 5 suitcases and one footlocker of memories.Sometimes it is fun to rummage through items that were treasured memories. Most of the time they were untouched. The fact remains, they are someone else’s memories. For years I have been keeping watch over these suitcases in hopes of keeping the memories alive. When a child becomes motherless every scrap of that women’s life that can be felt or seen is a priceless heirloom. The pain of missing these important women who should be sharing the stories that go with these heirlooms, made opening the suitcases too hard.  However, it needed to be done.

Yesterday, I sat in my garage with all 5 suitcases and my big blue footlocker. Legs stretched out encircled by the luggage and two garage bags,  I am proud to say, that I have whittled down the paper to the three matching suitcases bearing my mother’s initials.  The contents is mostly pictures, which I plan to
scan and place in viewable books.  I saved some of the paper items that could be scanned and used as embellishments in a photo book to help mark the period of time.  I shed a few tears, but mostly they were tears of missing my mother and grandmother.  Today, I am not sad about throwing away the papers.  I feel a bit lighter.  Those suitcases have been a burden of guilt. I could not be the one to throw away the last little bits of my mother’s heirlooms.  The epiphany came when I was going through my foot locker and realized I was leaving my daughters with the same burden.  As a motherless daughter, I keep everything, so my daughters would know who I am…just in case.  I think I’ve defied the odds (you can read about that in this blog post) and they can see who I am and remember me using their own pile of papers and memories.

One thing the women on my side of the family have in common is the collection of memorabilia.  My grandmother, my mother, myself and now my daughters have all saved piles of stuff.  In my move this month, I am taking some of my youngest daughters stuff with us.  I have learned that keeping your stuff is for you to enjoy.  When the joy turns to a burden it is time to trim it down, let it go, and make new memories…to fill new suitcases with more stuff. But not these three cases, they are going to the dump!