Your most precious memories and all the things that you hold dear will die with you. That is a cold, hard truth about mortality. My niece recently observed that it only takes a generation or two to completely wipe out memories of a life. The tangible evidence of relationships, emotions, and experiences that molded and shaped a person will not matter at all to posterity. The only way that your memories can live after you is if you tell the stories to your children and other family members, write them in a blog, or publish them in a book, unless you happen to be famous enough for someone else to tell your story for you.
It was an eye-opener for me when I held a box of keepsakes of my mother's. Inside the box, on top of all the assorted trinkets was a note that said, in large block letters, "KEEP FOREVER." To whom was she writing the note? Did she need to remind herself to keep them? Did she expect her children and grandchildren to hold onto these items without knowing their significance? Did she think that preserving these items for posterity would somehow give her immortality?
As I rummaged through her precious keepsakes, I was saddened to realize that these things were absolutely meaningless to me. They are meaningless even to my mother at this point in her life. She no longer has the ability to retrieve these memories in her mind. Yet throughout her adulthood, she has carried boxes and boxes of this stuff from house to house... how much time and effort wasted! I doubt if she looked inside those boxes very often, if at all.
All I could think about was the boxes of memorabilia that my own children will have to sort through when I am gone. These days, a person's memorabilia may include vast gigabytes of digital items. But in my mother's lifetime and in the first half of my own life, precious memories were all represented in tangible formats. Ribbons, cards, letters, buttons, and so many otherwise value-less things are stored in furniture, boxes, and trunks. Though they may be small things, together they take up a lot of space, in our homes and in our minds.
Yes, each precious item brings back a special memory or evokes a strong emotion. However, the truth is, managing these things consumes valuable time that we could otherwise use to experience new feelings and make new memories. When we die, most of our precious things will be sold or donated or trashed. That is just a fact of life. So why not give your things a new life by letting them go, to perhaps be a joy to someone else? Liberate yourself from slavery to temporary things. Do a huge favor for your kids.
Your life is more than your stuff. Tell the stories. The stories are what lives on.
