Someone Else’s Memories

This year’s spring-cleaning has been dedicated to downsizing and organizing boxes in the basement.

My husband and I each have a couple memory boxes filled with greeting cards from loved ones, pictures, and mementos from the highlights of our lives. Each of our five children also has a memory box, mostly filled by me with schoolwork and the highlights of their school years. In addition, there are bins inherited from when each of my parents passed away.

My husband went through his boxes while I went through mine.

This walk down memory lane type of cleaning happens every few years and each time, I find that I want to keep less and less. I don’t need every handmade construction paper birthday card from Grandma Little with her distinct signature on it; one or two will do.

If I don’t remember what an item is from and if it doesn’t have distinctive markings, then I don’t need it in my memory bin. Newspaper articles featuring one of the kids, I kept. Artwork, clearly identifying who created it, keepers. Letters and cards from my parents, grandparents, or other special people in my life that say something meaningful, I’ll cherish forever. Going through this task was easy because I know what I want to cherish and keep in MY memory box. Those memories are mine.

Once my bins were done, I went through each of the kids for the first time. They were bursting with unlimited graded papers from elementary school, imaginative artwork, and certificates from every egg hunt event they were a part of. My goal was to tidy, organize, and ensure items were allocated in the correct bins. The kids will go through and decide what they’d like to keep and what they’ll get rid of when they want to take the time to reminisce.

When my mom passed, I had to get rid of a lot of her belongings due to time and circumstance but felt it important to hold on to pictures and paperwork. If we couldn’t keep the tangible belongings, at least we’d have the pictures.

My mom has been gone for six and a half years. Those bins and boxes are taking up a lot of room in my basement and serving no purpose, so I finally feel that I have the strength to look through them.

Amongst her boxes I found all her writings, she loved to write, obviously I will keep those. There were cards that were sent to her from loved ones, letters that were sent to her from boyfriends, high school yearbooks, pictures of trips she went on and old black and white photos of people I don’t know. Within my mom’s stuff were pictures and paperwork that she inherited from her mom, her Aunt Isabelle, and her Uncle Charlie, so I have their yearbooks, writings, and pictures as well.

I found myself having a hard time deciding whether to discard things that were important to them. I didn’t know which of their memories to keep.

While I was going through this exercise, it sadly occurred to me that, not only are the people gone, but that their memories, the stories that they didn’t tell, are gone too. Many of the pictures were familiar because they were much like memories I have, proms, vacations, trips, dinners, celebrations, cats, dogs, and loved ones. But now they are just sitting in a box in my basement and mean nothing to me or anyone else. So, does it really matter if they are sitting in a box in my basement or in some landfill? I don’t have the wherewithal right now to figure it all out. So, if the things mean nothing to me, and I don’t think they’ll mean anything to anyone else that’s still around, I’m clearing them out of my basement.

I’m throwing away someone else’s memories…