From The Past: July 29, 2007

An older lady in our neighborhood died 19 days ago. This is how the curb looks tonight:

Actually, it may be worse now since Kevin took this photo around 7:30 this evening and it is now 11:02.

Looking at these things makes me sad. I didn’t know the woman. I saw her walking her dog each night and she spoke to Ashley a few times, but we didn’t know her.

What makes me sad is how valuable our things are to us, but how meaningless they are to other people.

I am sure she chose that couch with much care; thinking about how well it would go with the curtains and other things in her house. She probably spent many hours sleeping on that mattress. There looks to be a lot of fabric in her garbage can; she must have had some feeling for it or why would she have kept it?

I helped mom clean some of her things out. We threw some things in the bin and shredded others. I believe her exact words were, “It just doesn’t matter anymore.”

It’s heartbreaking, but true. Our things matter to us and they will hopefully matter to our children, but are their children really going to care about these mementos? Should we expect them to hold on to things, make room in their homes for things they really don’t want and are keeping just because?

Now, I’m not accusing this lady’s family of throwing out very personal items that she dearly loved. I’m just wondering, when I die, what will my kids throw away? What will they keep? Will they say to themselves, Mom sat on this couch, so I can’t get rid of it or will they do what these people did and kick it to the curb in less than a month? I guess it depends on the condition of the couch and if its needed.