The Right Stuff
I ran into my friend Charles out on a walk the other morning. He told me about an aunt who had passed away in the fall. He and his sister were in the process of cleaning out his aunt’s house.
“There’s so much stuff,” he moaned. “Christmas decorations from the ‘40s, gallons and gallons of old paint and wood stain, magazines, drawers and drawers of silverware. And my sister is barely any help at all! She’s so sentimental about all of it and doesn’t want to get rid of anything. ‘Oh we should really keep the lamps,’ or ‘Someone might want the collection of Hummels,’ you know, those ceramic figurines that everyone in the 60s seemed to collect and were going to be worth millions?” He rolled his eyes. “I keep telling her, we’ve got to get rid of most of it. It’s…..junk. It’s junk. Just call it what it is.”
“Well you know what they say about one man’s junk and everything,” I teased.
“Yeah, well that person never had to dismantle a dead relative’s house,” sighed Charles.
I felt bad for Charles and his sister, but I felt worse for me. I have a lot of stuff, and I, too, am sentimental about all of it. And if what he was saying was true about one’s attitude toward the detritus of the deceased, then it’s pretty likely someday someone will be standing in the middle of my belongings going, “Really? Six boxes of unused greeting cards? How many jars of rocks and sea glass does one person actually need? She must have been really bad at the end.”
I not only carry a lot of affinity for my things, I’m territorial. I never lend out books. NEVER. That’s like asking someone if they can borrow your dog for a few days. Years ago, my friend Rachel lent several books by her favorite author to a guy she was dating. Personally, I could see the magnitude of this error from space. That relationship went south in a spectacularly bad way, making it impossible for Rachel to get back her books.
“They’re just…GONE?!” I remember blurting to her in horror and disbelief. “Do you think you could, maybe, see if there’s a time when he’s not home for you to go over and get them?” I asked, glossing over the pain of her messy break-up to the thing that really mattered.
I did give a book out once. It was to someone I was dating and things were getting very serious. He was going on a business trip, and I had just stumbled upon a fantastic humor writer named Dan Kennedy. His book, Rock On, was about landing his dream job at a record label in the late-1990s. Forking it over made my palms itch, but it felt like my version of skywriting “I love you!” He knew me well enough by then to know that this was in the “big deal” category right up there with making someone your emergency contact. Six years later we were married. And that book is present and accounted for on my shelf, thank you very much.
I also related to Charles and his sister’s situation because I’m an aunt. I have nephews and one niece. There are some things I will want to bestow upon them, which is how I think of it—giving them the HONOR and PRIVILEGE of owning my CD collection, which, by the time of my death far, far into the future could just as easily be gifted to a museum. But, as I said, I’m protective of my garbage. I don’t think I’d be able to release any other parts of my estate, even to family, after I’m gone without first going through a rigorous vetting process:
Are we still on speaking terms?
Do you have any outstanding debts owed to me?
Am I still your favorite aunt/person? (lies accepted)
Would I still be proud of you?
If I end up entombed with most of my possessions, would you make sure no one breaks into the crypt to steal my precious Beatrix Potter dinnerware collection?
Did you become a Republican?
We’re tangled up in our stuff. These things, no matter how esoteric or prestigious or trivial, mark moments, milestones; they become the material witnesses to our lives. Giving these things away or selling them feels like we’re erasing ourselves while we’re still alive. Maybe this is why most of us do nothing about any of it, leaving it for someone else to deal with after we’re gone.
The first person we met when we moved to the neighborhood was Ed Clark. He lived in the house directly across the street from us. Our front steps gazing at one another. At the time when we met him, Mr. Clark was still a spry 88-year old man. Widowed, no children, a retired literature professor, Mr. Clark had lived an incredible life. He had served in World War II and then earned his PhD, eventually settling in Boston to teach. In the 1960s he was very active in the Civil Rights movement. One evening over lemonade and cookies, he told us about taking students from Boston to Washington, D.C. to participate in civil rights marches and rallies: riding all night on a bus to spend the day in D.C. and then driving back all night to get home in time for his classes. He told us about the time when Dr. King led a march from Roxbury to Boston. Mr. Clark had gone with a group of students.
“I’m walking along and I look to my right and there is Dr. King himself. It was a very hot day, but he was dressed in a sharp suit, very fancy, shaking hands and talking with people as he went along. He made quite an impression,” said Mr. Clark with all the casualness of someone who has maybe not seen it all, but has seen enough.
By the time Mr. Clark had slid into his early-90s he seemed to adopt a practical attitude about his age and whatever time he might have left. He left a note in our mailbox asking if we could come over one weeknight; he had something he wanted to talk to us about. When we went into the house, I noticed that some of his paintings and furniture had been stickered. They were those small, round red stickers that you find on things at yard sales to mark something as sold. He explained, in a straight-forward manner, that he was setting aside things he wanted certain people to have.
He showed us a couple of standing lamps and a plant stand about waist height with a dark wooden top and wrought iron base. He asked us to choose from any of these pieces. The stand was so different and unique. “Where did this come from?” I asked.
He laughed and his eyes lit up. “My father worked for Standard Oil in Ohio. He ran one of their gas and service stations. At the time the cash registers were bolted to these stands. When they were getting rid of them, my father took a few. And this one has moved with me from every place I’ve ever lived.” I looked and saw four small wooden knobs that had been used to plug the holes left by the cash register.
“I would very much like this,” I said, trying to keep it together and not, you know, let a gas station make me cry.
We brought the stand home and put it near a sunny window in our living room. I found a nice, indestructible plant to put on it. It makes me happy to see every time I’m in the room. To anyone else it probably looks like a slightly odd piece of rustic furniture that maybe came from Pottery Barn, but to me it’s rather remarkable, as one-of-a-kind as Mr. Ed Clark himself.
Lens Zen!
We did it! Spring officially sprang…sprong….sprung? on March 19 at 11:06 pm and there are no takesies-backsies, Mother Nature—looking at YOU suspicious weather system bringing a chance of snow this weekend. I went downtown last weekend with my camera and spring optimism. A couple of cherry trees in the Public Garden are juuuuuuuust starting to flower and I was one of the many tractor beamed to their candy pink buds like color-starved winter zombies. Even these tiny signs were worth. the. wait. Onward!
I loved this and it resonated with me too. When my dad died, I was the one who cleaned out his apartment, and while he didn’t have much, I still had to DO SOMETHING WITH IT.
I came home from that trip 13 years ago and vowed to consistently purge and try not to buy more than I need. All well and good but if you need any curly hair products, I’ve got a small Overstock.com store in my bathroom cabinets. And I too have boxes of unused greeting cards. It’s all about balance! 😘
This is such a great story! Just beautiful storytelling.
I think about my possessions all the time, in aggregate. I'm slowly trying to come to grips with a mad phase of Star Wars collecting I went through in my 20s. And also just to have less stuff. It's hard to get rid of it once it finds its way into your house.