Used twist ties, pieces of saved rope, empty Maxwell House coffee cans and glass baby food jars that date back to the 50’s. My father was neat. My father was organized. My father saved everything.
This summer, my sisters and I began the process of cleaning out 60 years of my parents’ life. Every nook and cranny of their house was jammed with bits of their lives. Some of those bits were important, some not so important. It was a tedious and often painful task that I know children often have to do when parents are gone. Grown up children, but still our parents’ children, examining every thread of what they once were and deciding which ones to keep and which ones should be discarded. We were born from an era of parents who kept everything, in case they might need it someday. They were the WWII generation. They knew what it was like to grow up with little or nothing. They knew what rationing was. They made sure that whatever they had, they would keep it safe. They were a “fix it” generation, instead of the “throw away when something is broken” generation of today.
My father kept things in original boxes, even if they were broken, in case someday he might need a part to fix something else. Amazingly, over the years, he would know just where to find what he wanted too! My mother was a collector also. A scrap of fabric was never too small to throw away. Tissue and gift boxes carefully flattened out, folded, and stored for later use.
So as we sifted through the years of items, around each corner, in each closet, above the garage and down to the basement, there were surprises we could never have guessed, and the feeling that there would be no end in sight.
Some things, kept for all these years, now became our decision to throw out. Yes, to all the empty cans, the glass jars, the vases from florists. Yes, to the used twist ties and bits of rope neatly hanging from nails in the garage. But then there are the pieces of paper, the letters and the photographs. The written history of people’s lives is something that cannot be replaced. Every letter my mother wrote my father and his to her when he served in WWII. Hundreds, in order, in their envelopes, dated, saved, in neat cardboard boxes. Letters my grandmother wrote to my mother, pages and pages, in the days when phone calls were too expensive and daily writing was what people did to communicate. Even letters I wrote from camp and later from college; my mother had saved them all. There was my grandmother’s daily journal, archiving forever what she did each and every day of her life. The photos told stories too, from the mid 1800’s through to the present. Thousands of photos, some were in envelopes, some with negatives, some in albums, but many were just in boxes. My mother had started the daunting task of putting them into files and scanning some to the computer but in recent years she had become too confused to keep it all straight and so the computer/photo room had become a mountain of photocopies and scraps in a jumbled mess. Photographs are memories that tell stories; they are memories to keep.
These are the pieces of two lives that are worth keeping. These are the ties that bind. Just as they saved the used twist ties and the bits of rope to hold things together, we will save these pieces of them to hold us together. These are the ties that bind.
This summer, my sisters and I began the process of cleaning out 60 years of my parents’ life. Every nook and cranny of their house was jammed with bits of their lives. Some of those bits were important, some not so important. It was a tedious and often painful task that I know children often have to do when parents are gone. Grown up children, but still our parents’ children, examining every thread of what they once were and deciding which ones to keep and which ones should be discarded. We were born from an era of parents who kept everything, in case they might need it someday. They were the WWII generation. They knew what it was like to grow up with little or nothing. They knew what rationing was. They made sure that whatever they had, they would keep it safe. They were a “fix it” generation, instead of the “throw away when something is broken” generation of today.
My father kept things in original boxes, even if they were broken, in case someday he might need a part to fix something else. Amazingly, over the years, he would know just where to find what he wanted too! My mother was a collector also. A scrap of fabric was never too small to throw away. Tissue and gift boxes carefully flattened out, folded, and stored for later use.
So as we sifted through the years of items, around each corner, in each closet, above the garage and down to the basement, there were surprises we could never have guessed, and the feeling that there would be no end in sight.
Some things, kept for all these years, now became our decision to throw out. Yes, to all the empty cans, the glass jars, the vases from florists. Yes, to the used twist ties and bits of rope neatly hanging from nails in the garage. But then there are the pieces of paper, the letters and the photographs. The written history of people’s lives is something that cannot be replaced. Every letter my mother wrote my father and his to her when he served in WWII. Hundreds, in order, in their envelopes, dated, saved, in neat cardboard boxes. Letters my grandmother wrote to my mother, pages and pages, in the days when phone calls were too expensive and daily writing was what people did to communicate. Even letters I wrote from camp and later from college; my mother had saved them all. There was my grandmother’s daily journal, archiving forever what she did each and every day of her life. The photos told stories too, from the mid 1800’s through to the present. Thousands of photos, some were in envelopes, some with negatives, some in albums, but many were just in boxes. My mother had started the daunting task of putting them into files and scanning some to the computer but in recent years she had become too confused to keep it all straight and so the computer/photo room had become a mountain of photocopies and scraps in a jumbled mess. Photographs are memories that tell stories; they are memories to keep.
These are the pieces of two lives that are worth keeping. These are the ties that bind. Just as they saved the used twist ties and the bits of rope to hold things together, we will save these pieces of them to hold us together. These are the ties that bind.
1 comment:
yes.. and i do hope we are able to get to the tasks our Mother could not finish!
In keeping with journals and family history... you should be saving all of these great stories you write here on your blog :-)
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