(This is republished in light of the fact that I just read one of the stresses of the current virus situation is that people are locked in with all their possessions.)
We all have it. If we are pushing eighty we probably have lots of it. Now, I know what we have is not merely stuff, but treasured objects which will, in due course, be enthusiastically embraced by our children who are just dying to own it. And if you believe that, then there really is a fountain of youth, and your lottery ticket will win tomorrow.
Silver? You mean that stuff that has to be polished? Your grandmother’s rocker? You mean the one with the broken cane seat that squeaks when it rocks? That picture? The weird one you picked up on one of your trips? Those figurines? The ones that need to be dusted all the time? Why would we want those ask a chorus of young voices. And while they may not actually say it out loud, their level of enthusiasm, which is that of someone facing a root canal, is absolute proof of their disinterest.
In fairness, we do not need to live as if in a monastic cell with none of our memories around us. It is natural to ask those that follow to deal with the living room sofa and the picture painted by Great Aunt Griselda hanging over that sofa. The problem is the boxes and piles of things in our attics and basements and closets, that even we do not want to examine.
According to a recent survey of 1,000 people who had helped settle an estate, the sorting and decluttering of the detritus of years was the most time-consuming, and the most stressful. We did not sort it ourselves because it was either an awful task or we were overtaken by sheer inertia, but at least we might have had some idea of what it all was. That picture of someone leaning jauntily against a lamp post in a fedora hat may well be your great-great grandfather, or just a long-forgotten neighbor of your parents. And while you may or may not remember who it is, it is a sure bet that your offspring will have no idea.
I am fortunate in having had a grandmother who handled all of this with grace. When she passed on she was living in a one bedroom apartment in a retirement home, however, she had grown up in a mansion in Chicago, her grandfather being one of the leading lights of Chicago society. At the end she had on her walls portraits of her children, some lovely leather bound books, one grand piece of furniture from her childhood, a filing cabinet filled with her writing (she was a published author), and a chest made in high school shop by the son lost in World War II. She had divested herself of all the rest over the years and her life had distilled into these few things that were important to her.
I only hope that I do as well.