Possessions

This has been a week of "stuff". "Stuff" as in possessions.

On Monday Kevin and I went to the storage locker and brought home all the remaining boxes of my mother's smaller possessions. We piled the boxes on the family room floor and tripped over them for a couple of days until I had time to find out what lurked inside---a job I thought would take several hours. It took less than one hour! Most of the boxes were marked "possible garage sale" or "decorative" and that's exactly what they were: perfectly decent decorative items that no one in the family would ever want.

Lest you think my mother has no taste, these decorative items were the leftovers---good leftovers, but leftovers nonetheless. When the whole family was gathered for Mom's 80th birthday seven years ago, Mom made everyone identify items that they would eventually want. After some hemming and hawing about this somewhat macabre activity, everyone did, in fact, choose items that were meaningful to them. It was touching and surprising to see what everyone chose.

Then almost two years ago my brother and I had only two days to completely empty Mom's apartment after she moved to the nursing home. Although we both married people who like to hold on to stuff, neither Ed or I got that gene. Our spouses would have choked to see us tossing ten items for every one that we kept...but they weren't there, so the genetically programmed tossers prevailed. The items that were kept either went to a refugee family that just happened to be arriving the next day or into a "temporary" storage locker. A few more stored items later went to another refugee family, but mostly the locker remained full, unvisited, and costly.

So, after pulling out a few items that will be useful to Kevin in a future apartment, I loaded my car and drove everything else to a resale shop which benefits a charity we support. I expected to go through the boxes yet once again with the resale shop staff, but, no, we just piled the boxes in their storeroom and that was that.

Meanwhile, Ken's brother Rick and his friend Raúl have put a new roof on our house and garage. Raúl and Rick graciously followed me to the storage unit today and loaded Raúl's truck with the bed, couch, desk, and bookshelf that remained in storage. Then Rick said, "Sure, I'll take the desk and couch!" The bed, by the way, is going to yet another refugee family.

As we were going down in the elevator at the storage place, Raúl asked me how much the storage unit cost. His mouth fell open when I told him. I could see him doing the mental math and figuring out the yearly cost. More has been spent for the storage locker that he made in four days of sweating on our roof! Something is wrong there...especially when you consider the hundreds of lockers in each of the thousands of storage faciities around the country!

We really had no alternative at the time we rented the storage unit, but I'm sure glad that it's now empty. I'm thrilled that three refugee families have furniture, lamps, dishes and cutlery. I'm glad Kevin will someday have a microwave and that Rick will use the couch. I'm glad that resale store shoppers will find inexpensive decorative items that they will enjoy and I'm glad that the charity will benefit too. And I'm glad I have the few mementos from Mom's things that give me warm feelings. Unbeknown to her, Mom has done a great job of recycling!

And, dear readers, anyone who EVER communicates with my mother is SWORN to secrecy on this recycling venture! It's still super important to her that her stuff is still HER stuff.