Abundance

Hospice nurses, as you might have guessed, know a lot about death.  But we also know a lot about life.  How to nurture it, cherish it, and examine the things that are worth our time. How to love boldly and honestly, but also to love loosely, knowing that everything on earth is temporary, so very, very temporary.  We are frequently reminded of the things that we don't take with us after we die, the things that, in the end, don't really matter.
 


I was recalling this lesson a few months ago as I stood in a room of a patient who had died some hours before.  I looked around the room and a makeup bag caught my eye.  It was still open, having been used not that long ago.  It sat by the sink, the remnant of a routine that was no longer necessary.  My patient most certainly would not be taking her makeup or any other of her belongings with her; and where she is now, she couldn't be more perfect or more beautiful.  I thought about my own makeup bag, sitting in a similar state at home, open and frequently used.  I was reminded to re-align my daily routines and the things in them to their less-important, temporary place in life.






That makeup bag moment, in addition to a growing desire to get the chaos of the house under control, gave me the courage to start letting go of the abundance of the stuff around me.  I've always had a hard time parting with my possessions, feeling emotionally tied to the memories they give me.  Old birthday cards, recital programs, even stuffed animals I played with as a child...I couldn't bring myself to let go of something that brought be back to a time and a feeling that I held sacred.  I was afraid of forgetting things and people that I wanted to cherish.  And moving on felt like forgetting. 






My parents are making their downsizing move this month, from the home we lived in for 23 years to a 2-bedroom condo.  I've been spending hours on the floor, laughing at my 8x10 school pictures of buck teeth and hesitant smiles, flipping through letters between me and my best friend discussing our middle school crushes, trying to pick the locks of old diaries, and studying playbills of my theater days.  Yesterday, all of the big pieces of furniture were moved, and when I walked in today I found myself staring at the marks in the carpet left by the legs of our dining room table.  Suddenly an image of my Grandpa came to my mind, carving the turkey at the head of the table.  Then when we all sat down to dinner, we would watch nervously as he rested his strong and heavy arms on the end of the table, making the end leaf crrrrreeeeeak every time he cut his food.  To our relief and surprise, the end leaf never broke off under the weight.  That table hosted every single one of my friends and all of my relatives, many who have died in the past few years.  I played underneath that table as a child, setting up little houses amidst the nooks and crannies of its support structures.  And now it is gone, and it makes me sad.






Every space in that home, every structure in it, holds floods of memories for me.  As we pack it up, I'm trying not to think about it too much, because we have had more than our share of loss this year.  I'm not sure my heart can endure much more.  So I continue to fill the boxes, toss the papers, and try to not give weight to the sadness of letting go of the tangible memories that took up space in my childhood home.





Getting stuff moved out of the house has coincided with a large community consignment sale, where I decided to finally sell the remainder of Oliver and Charlie's outgrown clothes.  I have tearfully struggled through trying to part with this category of stuff.  We are done having children, and letting go of the clothes they grew up in reminds me that we are done, moving on, and that we won't have babies grow up in this house again.  I managed to get my selling inventory up to 93 items.  It would have been 94, but I couldn't stop holding a little pair of cotton navy blue shorts close to my chest: shorts that Oliver wore when he came home with us for the first time.




There's been a lot of letting go this year.  I trust that things given away will provide space to fill with the intangible things that really matter.  And yet, I know it's okay to keep a pair of newborn shorts, to cry over a table, and spend some quality time with my yearbooks.  Because feeling life is an important part of living it, and that's something I want to do in abundance.