Lately I have been doing a lot of downsizing. Downsizing for me means getting rid of a lot of accumulated junk. Junk defined as stuff I no longer need or never probably needed in the first place. In the process I have come across a bunch of photos, genealogy and loads a things with memories attached.
Those memory attached items will really mess with ya every time! Why am I keeping this thing and is the time or place or reason I acquired it that significant? Who will care about it after I have passed? Is the person who gave it to me really going to care if I still have it or will they even know if I still have it? I don't expect that every single thing I have given people over the years is all cherished and loved and put in a place of honor. Things are just that things and the memories live on even after the thing is no longer around.
Most of the genealogy I've come across is to be honest a little boring. I like to know the blood lines/tree branches but I can do without the narrative that are mostly written by a child or relative of the person and not really the person who lived it. I also know that two people living in the same house can have very different stories about growing up there based on their own viewpoint of the life they lived. I am not in anyway trying to say that anyone is untruthful more that the perspectives can and in most cases will be entirely different. I think anything more than a few basic facts like place of birth, marriage(s), divorce(s), children, death, occupation(s) should be autobiographical. I know that if I wrote the story of any family member's life it would be totally from my perspective no matter how hard I tried to get the whole truth unless I was writing the story as told to by the person involved. I was blessed to have had long talks with my grandfather that completely changed my views of him as a person and some of the choices he made. I feel confident I could write what he told me and have it be his truth with only a little of my perspective. But anyone who never sat with him and talked might have the same thoughts I do about writing the story of someone else. We have boxes and files and bound books of genealogy but most of leaves me wondering for real truths.
The photos crack me up. The ones I was present at the time they were taken evoke memories both good and bad while others stroke the fires to try to remember when or where it was taken. We have so many photos and I am as guilty as anyone of putting them in a box without a date or label. I mean really who are some of these old people and how are they connected. The only ones I can truly identify are the ones I' personally can remember, like my grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings but there are other people in these photos who are probably family I never met or I just don't remember anymore. My mom and uncles were huddled around the computer the last time we were together trying to figure out who was in photos, when they were taken and where they were taken. It would be so much easier if we did that from the start. I look at these photos today and think I need to scan them all. Identify who is in them and make them available to friends and family... Then what to do with the hard copies? Remember I am downsizing.
This whole process is exhausting. If it were just me it might be easier but I have to consider the feelings of others. Will passing this on to someone who will use it hurt the feelings of the giver? Then I wonder if it is better to have the objects stuck in a box in the closet? That organizer on TV (Walsh I think) always said if it doesn't deserve a place of honor then it is okay to get rid of it. In a box in the closet isn't really a place of honor. I guess that would go back to the "treasure box" my mom made for us as kids to put the things we treasure that mostly became treasures because we didn't look at them every day but have special meaning. Those "treasure" boxes were always in our closets but if our new treasures didn't fit in the box we got rid of something to make space for a new treasure. Hey that might work.. I also wonder if I will regret tossing or giving away things? Why would I regret getting rid of the excess? Except when someone asks for it later on or when I find out later that something I had is worth money today. It takes a ton of time to research and then sell everything. Way too many questions to ponder as I go through this process....
