For the first time since moving into this apartment, sitting at my desk feels spacious and comfortable. I have been deleting items from my internal hard drives, metaphorically speaking. Emptying drawers, pulling out out cabinet guts. All in all, facing the music.
So many things I thought I never could part with, or that I would re-sell, soon to be gobbled up by my favorite charity shops, then on to a New Home, where they can be someone else’s precious junk. The impact of parting with so many previously precious objects echoes through my daily life in ways that are both subtle and deep.
Stripping my mothers apartment triggered what I am doing now. It consumed me emotionally, but also creatively. Required to perform a ritual for which I felt unqualified, I emptied her last dwelling with as much seriousness and humor as I could. What I found at the end of that exercise was a kind of dead reckoning for what was important to me. Before, I could not decide where to start or what to do. I still don’t really know, in any conscious way. But preparing my mother’s home for our new life together, after her death, where the only place she lives is with me, demanded an equal effort on my part. I have had to clean up my act.
The way some women fold linens and sweep, manically driven to finish their nest before the baby comes, my subconscious is preparing me to go somewhere. I don’t know where. Nothing I have in this home is necessary there, except a few things which, pieced together, form a jigsaw puzzle picture of my heart. I love it here, but loving where I’m headed comes first, and to get there, it is time to travel light.
what is beautiful remains 
Did I hit a button too soon and did you get most of what I wrote. Stop being so hard on yourself somewhere you learned how to love now use that skill on yourself!
Duh! Must have deleted first thoughts.
Yes, in repairing my mother’s material life, I discovered that I didn’t need all the stuff around me. Her stuff didn’t really make her happy.
You have what you need inside of yourself. Someone in your life taught you to love.
as usual, barb, you are right to the point. thank you i really need the encouragement!
Wow,
Very lovely indeed!
thanks deb. you always give me so much encouragement!
I had a lot of the same feeling about helping clear out my paternal grandmother’s house after she died. A lot of it was confusing (like “Why did she keep so much of THAT?”), some of it was funny (our old, awkward school photos), but most of it was just kind of sad. I had a similar purging-of-the-stuff-in-my-own-house reaction, too.
When it comes down to it, it really is just STUFF. It’s not us. And it’s liberating to shed it.
xxoo