Memories are in your heart, not your stuff

After several years of helping people – on a professional level – sort through their lives, their possessions and their memories, I thought I would be prepared to do it myself. I was wrong.

I recently lost my father, who was still living in the same cottage at a continuing care retirement community in Pennsylvania that he had shared with my late mother for many years. Of course, they had already downsized from the home my brothers and I grew up in, but their cottage was still full of memories that stopped me in my tracks.

Of course, I had counseled and consoled many clients through the difficult decisions to donate or sell – or even sometimes destroy – mementos large and small. In our work, my colleagues and I show great compassion and care for our clients and their treasures. We encourage them to share the stories of their stuff with us. We’re aware that possessions hold great power to evoke a flood of emotions.

My brothers and I did a good job of sorting through many things. Each of us took things that were meaningful to us.

But, when it came to my mother’s dining room table, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I remembered all the family occasions when we gathered around that table from my youth, through the inclusion of spouses, to the ease my mother showed as she fed us all and basked in the family she and my father had created.

It seemed impossible to let that table go.

However, neither of my brothers nor I had room for the table in our homes. So, I put on my big-girl pants and began employing the same techniques we counsel our clients to use.

First, I didn’t reject the sadness, but embraced it. The emotions are real … and I consider myself lucky to have those cherished memories. Second, I took a picture of the table that I can look at to remind me of those family dinners. Third, I hired our sister Caring Transitions office in Pennsylvania – an objective, yet trusted resource – to handle the table’s sale, reminding myself that they weren’t selling my memories; they were selling a very large brown table. And fourth, I believe that some other family will create their own memories around that table.

Many people in the middle of downsizing and/or relocating are doing so after a loss. They perhaps are newly widowed, or are grappling with a medical condition that makes staying in their homes impossible. For adult children, cleaning out a family home is often the result of a parent’s death or a move into a safer living situation.

By definition, these life transitions already carry grief that is compounded by the perceived loss of memories. And that’s why stuff has such power over us all.

So, when you’re going through one of these transitions ,as I recently did, take your time. Acknowledge your feelings. Enlist the help of family, friends or professionals who are not struggling with the loss to help you. Take pictures of items that are particularly meaningful.

And remember that the memories are in your heart, not in your stuff. And they are much lighter and easier to find space for than a dining room table.