It's Only Stuff

Once we get older and our families are grown we sometimes look around and wonder how we gathered so many possessions! Things we will never use again and may never have a need for again! But, one never knows for sure and after all those things don’t eat!

The things we become so attached to and cannot bear to part with have such meaning to us. It can be a very emotional moment when we lose something that we just know we had! 

We hate to think any one item has found it’s way out of our possession. After all, it has a deep purpose to us .Our grown children ( and other relatives) often ask us exactly what that purpose could possibly be. 

This is a good point which we should explore. That particular item may represent a time in our career when we lacked that tool or item and to us, it represents climbing to success and acquiring that tool or item.  Still another meaning may be symbolic of a time in our life when we could not even dream of owning that particular item because perhaps we had humble beginnings or a very rough childhood. Still, other items may represent our own meaning of luxury; 

I really don’t need it, but I have it if I ever want it!   Still another meaning is maybe this is where I was in life when I acquired that or this is what happened in my life and I bought that.

Milestones and memories can all be symbolized by our “stuff”.  So, liquidating our precious belongings can be like dissolving the meaning of our life. 

I once had a conversation with someone, discussing his consideration of moving to another state. He shared that he had so much stuff it would take ten moving vans to move it all. I suggested he eliminate and his answer was direct and to the point. He said,” I can’t do that it took me all my life to get it all!”  A point well made and well taken.

Simply, it was ” his stuff”. He should not have to eliminate if he chooses not to do so. In our golden years, we are so often put in a position to give up all of “our stuff”. When that happens it may have a drastic effect. Many times people give up when they are forced into that position. I remember my own dear mother who hated to give up her belongings, so, we moved them all. Piles of magazines, piles of newspapers, balls of string and aluminum foil, boxes of buttons and odd dishes and glassware that matched nothing.  

When her two grandsons went and helped her move every little thing she cherished, she was mentally and emotionally ready to move to another state for good. We put it all in storage and would go get whatever she wanted to look at, upon demand. Sometimes I would take her to the storage unit just to see that all her treasures were in fact intact.  

This seemed to help her accept she was growing older. We took all her stray photos and organized them into memory books which she later looked at daily after she was stricken with a mild form of dementia due to strokes. I have never regretted doing any of these things. Seniors have their “stuff” whether it be from Cabbage Patch dolls in the attic and kitchen gadgets in the cupboards to textbooks in the basement, nuts and bolts and car parts in the garage, five kinds of lawn mowers in the outbuilding, need all these things. You see, it is not things, it represents their lives, and yes it is only “stuff” but, it is “Their Stuff”