Material Stuff

When Al died, one of my widowed friends offered to come to my apartment that week and help me get rid of his things, as her sister had done for her in her time of need. It was a generous offer, but I declined. I wasn't ready to let go of all the material stuff that had meant so much to him. He had treasured his collections of clothes, belts, boots, hats, other accessories, and when he especially liked the fit or quality of something, he bought duplicates, ensuring their replacement when the original wore out. His assumption was that he would live a long, long life, and his fear was that he would not have enough to last to its end.

As a result I wound up with closets and drawers stuffed with his possessions. Somehow his reverence for these things transferred over to me (partly because he had occupied the apartment for a couple of decades before I'd moved in). I couldn't even contemplate cracking open his closet doors, let alone entering and emptying their contents. Three months after his death, when our relatives flew to New York for a memorial service, I invited our nieces and nephews to take whatever they wanted. They had no trouble whatsoever in breaching the hold. The girls took his cashmere sweaters and ties. The boys shirted and suited up for post-college interviews. When they were finished, my bedroom looked like the end of a 75% off sale day at Barney's. I consolidated what they'd left behind and lived around it all for a couple of years. It's funny what a person chooses not to see or feel. 

I'm not sure what made me decide to make more space for myself in my own living quarters or, rather, in my own life. I needed to work up to a major change in my perceptions before I could take what felt to me like a major action. It was a few years after Al's death that I hired an organizer to come in and help me. The project took nearly all day. We started with two industrial-sized garbage bags: 1) to give away and 2) to throw away. A third pile was to keep. Hiring a professional was money well-spent. The woman was ruthless and relentless, just what I needed. She gave me little time to dwell on or protest the process, and I was swept up in her determination. We wound up with about twenty-five bags and a tiny keepsake pile. We drove to Housing Works with about twenty bags stuffed with contributions, brought the refuse bags to the basement, and redistributed my things into the emptied drawers and closets. Done, done, and done. 

I sometimes wish I was like my friend who offered to help me clear out my apartment the week Al died. She tends to act with immediacy in other circumstances too. People like that get more accomplished more quickly, and life, as we know, can be so brief. But I'm just not made that way. I suppose accepting the way we are made and figuring out how to work with our own material is an accomplishment too, whenever we happen to come to our realizations.