This past winter my husband and I sorted some things. I've had spasms of sorting and pitching throughout my adult life, but I began the process in earnest after my mother died in 2019. Closets. Boxes. Photos. Old files.
Even though Mom had downsized to a one-room apartment, it was hard for my siblings and me to sort her things. I didn't want our kids to be stuck with stuff we should have thrown out years ago.
Swedes call the process of de-cluttering döstädning, which translates to "death cleaning." While the term sounds morbid, this tough-minded practice is designed to relieve families of the burden of going through piled-up possessions when loved ones die.
The Book of Ecclesiastes says that there is a "time to keep and a time to throw away – a time for every purpose under heaven."
During the Covid lockdown, many of my retired friends tackled long-delayed decluttering in their homes. I worried about the burgeoning landfills as all of us Baby Boomers filled dumpsters at the exact same time. Not to mention recycling bins and charitable collection agencies. When the Salvation Army in Brighton opened again after the lockdown, I waited in my car for forty minutes as fifteen cars peeled off in front of me. One by one. With practiced disinterest, workers heaved our bags and boxes into overflowing bins.
And I still have plenty of stuff in my house.
In my office: Old writing projects. Memorabilia. Books yet to be culled. In the basement: Random pieces of lumber. Broken cubbies. Assorted camping gear.
My husband and I own three different kinds of tents. The REI Kingdom 4 tent that replaced the North Face backpacking tents that replaced the four-person Eureka tent. Don't believe it when they tell you a four-person tent sleeps four people. Hogwash. The newest REI tent is just right for Ed and me. By ourselves. Unless we're "glamping" in the trailer we purchased in 2021 that has a full-size refrigerator and indoor bathroom.
As young parents, Ed and I camped in the then-new Eureka tent at Acadia National Park with our daughter Laura when she was eighteen months old. We took the North Face tents canoe-camping on the Buffalo River in the Ozarks when the girls were fifteen and thirteen. That was the trip when our dog, Rascal, caused Ed and Barbara to flip, spilling all of our cookware into the river. (See blog #15, "Lost and Found.") Our family still talks about that adventure.
Nostalgia makes it hard to keep sorting. We have feelings about our things.
I added a one-word nudge to my daily to-do list: "Stuff."
In February, Ed and I tackled a box in the basement containing the neoprene wetsuits we use for whitewater canoeing. These tight-fitting, full-size "Farmer John" wetsuits fasten with Velcro closures over the shoulders and open at the ankles with a six-inch zipper. Wetsuits retain body heat by holding a layer of warm water next to the skin.
But they are snug.
"There's only one way to find out if we should keep these," I said. After stripping to my underwear, I began pulling the wetsuit up my legs. The fit in the hips had been tight when we wore them last in 2012 on the Tellico River in Tennessee. One of the seams had begun to split. Now I could barely get the damn thing over my butt. I yanked and tugged. It was like trying to put two pounds of sausage into a one-pound casing. Ed looked over at me. "Looks like raccoons wrestling in there," he said.
But he was having similar difficulties. We looked at each other and laughed.
I helped him pull up his shoulder straps in the back.
"Will there be a time when we want to paddle a whitewater river in cold weather?" he asked soberly.
"I don't think so," I said. And felt sad. Even now, when we live just four miles from the fairly gentle Huron River, we don't often paddle in cold weather. Our early spring whitewater days appear to be over.
Getting rid of things may mean saying goodbye to a season of our lives.
Still, we have the memories. The family trips. Those days of joy on the water.
Advocates of decluttering promise that newly-vacated spaces will grant an attendant peace of mind. They are right. When I get rid of something, I do feel lighter. The house seems roomier, and my spirits rise.
The process of sorting our stuff, however, raises larger questions: What legacy do we leave? Besides money, and a few tangible possessions, what do we want our children to receive? And, how can we ease their grief when that day comes?
So, faced with such imponderables, I did what I do: I gave away our neoprene and wrote a poem. The poem was inspired by Thomas Lynch's most recent collection of poems, Bone Rosary. Lynch is an undertaker. I am a pastor. Like Lynch, I have often stood at the portal between life and death.
A Note for My Daughters When That Day Comes
Cry if you like, sob, clutch sodden tissues,
or come dry-eyed to the church, I won't care.
Your grief may feel like a rip current along the shore
of Lake Michigan, pulling on your ankles, not enough
to drown you, but enough to unsteady your feet.
Or maybe grief will arrive
like the little black flies that breed in May, humming, hovering,
two inches from your eyeballs as you walk through the woods.
You swat them away, but they come back, and later leave welts
under your hatband or in the tender creases of your skin.
Maybe you will hug
your own children hard and long until they protest, "Mom," eager
to get back to their toys or phones. You will sigh and rub the space between
their shoulder blades, letting them go, and return to the laundry, dishes,
dirty litterbox, or the infinite emails on your own screen.
Maybe, when you go
through my things as I went through my mother's, holding a book
that she once held, balancing the spine, or rubbing against my cheek
the satin of a half-slip that old women wear, you will wish like I did
that you'd said something different that one time, or nothing at all.
It's okay, I want to tell
you. It's okay. We all have things we regret. But know this: I had
a good life. I loved your father some fifty odd years, thanked God
for both of you when you were born, watched you grow up lovely
and strong, and blessed in turn the grandbabies you shared.
When spring came, I walked
trails crowded with bluebells and knelt beside trillium in the soft loam.
I plied my paddle against the current under summer sun. Come autumn
I crumpled the leaves of sweetgum to smell the sharp resin. In winter
still walked in heavy clothes through the snow.
If sometimes I wandered
at night unsleeping, floorboards creaking under my feet, restless
with desire or remembered pain, what of it? We all carry the weight
of generations. My undone work will come to you, as my parents'
came to me, as invitation and burden, to accept or reject. This is who we are.
And if while I walked, it was worry for you
that kept me awake, forgive me. I should have trusted
that you could find your own way. But oh, my daughters,
this, too, is love: to wander the hallway as moonlight falls
in bright bars through the window while your children mutter
and turn in their sleep. In time, grief will ease, this grief or
another. So, I hope you know only that you were loved.
Yes. You were loved.
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Playlist: "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)," Pete Seeger, 1962.