things
Sorting someone else's things is profoundly intimate.
I violate private space to empty the desk and the dressers.
I judge the value of objects:
worthwhile memento
useful bit
questionable mystery
worthy of donation
recyclable
worthless trash
I create categories:
office supplies
foreign currency
drawings and calculations
mementos
garage debris
medicine
clothing
books
Many objects remind me of something about their owner. Some objects reveal what I had never known.
Each decision feels like not only a decision about the object, but a decision about the person.
I want to claim the corners of this house that have been unused since Adam died. I want to fill them with life and purpose instead of dust and cobwebs.
I purchase the space with my tears.
I violate private space to empty the desk and the dressers.
I judge the value of objects:
worthwhile memento
useful bit
questionable mystery
worthy of donation
recyclable
worthless trash
I create categories:
office supplies
foreign currency
drawings and calculations
mementos
garage debris
medicine
clothing
books
Many objects remind me of something about their owner. Some objects reveal what I had never known.
Each decision feels like not only a decision about the object, but a decision about the person.
I want to claim the corners of this house that have been unused since Adam died. I want to fill them with life and purpose instead of dust and cobwebs.
I purchase the space with my tears.
I went through a very similar process after my mom died. Everything in her duplex was coated in soot from the fire and smoke which claimed her life, so I had to constantly make the decision of what to keep, try to clean, and what had to be thrown away. The process took me a couple of weeks, and every day I would leave the duplex coated in soot, a physical manifestation of the grief I carried with me that wouldn't come off with simple washes and stained my clothes, my car, my own home. I still have things that are so stained, and I always will.
ReplyDeleteLove this, especially the last line. May you know Presence in this space that is yours.
ReplyDelete