I’m surprised by how good it feels now to have put them away.
 |
| Here is a before picture from 2017. The largest family photo on the left is actually a duplicate of one I have in a smaller size in my bedroom. So there was no reason to have both out. It was just here from when this was my Mom's room. This also shows the bottom two shelves as they were before I did my downsize featured in: Desperate to declutter |
 |
| The after shot. The top of the bookcase is what I'm writing about here. The black thing is a tv antenna. As you can see I still haven't added more stuff to the bottom two shelves. It isn't from lack of possibilities! I just haven't wanted to clutter it up with anything else yet. Is that weird? |
I felt guilty at first, as if I was being disloyal to all those people in some way because I put their pictures and mementos away. But I’m realizing I don’t need to give so much space to the past or to family members who don't live here.
My parents had such a large collection of old family photos, mostly 8x10, that my Dad made two special cubby shelf units and created a large display area on one end of their living room.
I still have the cubby shelves. (One is in a closet because I don’t know what to do with it.) The other one is hanging in my office where I am writing this. When my Mom lived with me this was her room and I put some of her cute knick-knacks on it. After she moved into a “residential care home” and I turned this room into my office I kept it on the wall, but I don’t have anything displayed on it anymore. I experimented with putting things on it, but I like the minimal uncluttered look best. When I look at it as I walk into the room it gives me a sense of peace.
It did anyway. Now I want to put it away too. In fact I don’t really want to keep it at all. The fact that my Dad made them is really the only reason I haven’t gotten rid of them both already. And because I kept thinking they might be useful someday.
But I don’t have anywhere in my house where I want them. It’s been 9 years since they came here with my Mom and all her other stuff. Nine years! It’s hard to believe it’s been that long since she sold her home and moved near us and then in with us. And after four years in our home she moved into a residential care home where she is now. Anyway, now that I think about it that is plenty long enough to show that I am not going to use them. I have given them a “fair go”, as my Aussie friends might say, and I can part with them with a clear conscience!
I feel embarrassed to admit that I don’t want them. But why should I? My brother didn’t want them and I don’t think he felt bad about it. In fact, he probably hasn’t given it another thought! So why do I feel like I have to keep them or I am being a bad daughter? I don’t need to feel obligated to keep anything just because my Dad made it or it was important to him once. He doesn't need it now. He's in heaven.
If I don’t want or have a use for those cubby shelves he made, for example, then I don’t need to keep them. It would be nice to find someone who will want them but why do I feel like I have to be the curator of everything? I don’t think “honor your father and mother” means we have to dispose of all their stuff in the most perfect possible way.
As I mentally “try on” the idea of getting rid of (or at least putting away) all these things I get a feeling like dark heavy layers lifting off of me and peeling away. Like I’m a newly hatched chick.
I am sensing that I have unconsciously been giving these things and the people they represent far too much “power” in my life for too long. Family is important to me. But I will always have my memories of them in my heart and mind. And if I lose those then photos or cubby shelves probably won’t help. The people were part of my past and they helped to make me, me. But I don’t have to stay stuck in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment