Packing Up A Home After So Many Years
I remember when my older brother was leaving for the Army, my mother held onto to him at the airport so tightly and for so long, we thought she’d never let go. She eventually did.
That memory returned to me because I’ve spent the past few weekends struggling to let go of the contents of an apartment I’ve owned since 1997. It’s a lovely one bedroom in downtown Chicago with a balcony and view of the sunrise over Lake Michigan. When I moved in, a priest friend celebrated a home Mass in the apartment. Afterward, I considered my little place as holy ground.
When I married, I moved into a house two hours south of Chicago. I used the apartment as an office when I had work in Chicago and a refuge for relatives and friends visiting the city. In recent years, though — with the pandemic and other commitments — I’ve spent increasingly less time there. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to give it up. It sat there, a kind of museum to pieces of my past.
If we each contain “whole unwritten books in the library of our heart” as the poet Kenneth Steven has written, my apartment represented an autobiography written in furniture, kitchenware, clothing, books and files. It was furnished with a mash-up of items from various periods in my life: a wooden rocking chair that my father carted home on his truck one day from God knows where. A coffee table from my childhood home in Bayonne, New Jersey that I used to play beneath. Posters of Toulouse Lautrec paintings I bought when I was a student in Paris. LP albums by Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel and James Taylor (does anyone remember LPs?).
It baffles me why I held on to other things, like a snow globe from Disney World commemorating 100 years of Mickey Mouse. Or a Zen-themed calendar from 2003. Or some plastic champagne flutes that say “New Year’s Eve 1998?” If it was a special new year’s eve I’ve long forgotten why.
Other items carried clear sentimental value, like the blue reclining chair my mother was sitting in when she suffered a fatal stroke. Its seat and arm rests were so worn I had to cover them in recent years with a blanket. Still, I would not get rid of that chair.
I kept a flowered loveseat in the bedroom, even after sun faded its fabric. It was a gift from my mother when I moved into the condo. My realtor, a lovely man and sentimental Italian American like me, gently suggested I keep a piece of cloth from each chair as a memento. I did. It removed some of the sting when the fellows from 1–800-Junk Removal came to carry both pieces away.
Some items remain keepers: books signed by authors I love, including poets Mary Oliver, Billy Collins and W.S. Merwin. And don’t think for a minute I could throw out any of the multiple copies I’ve kept of literary journals where my poetry appeared. That would be like a mother abandoning her children. And yet, childless as I am, I keep thinking: who on earth will want such things when I’m gone?
My parents kept statues of certain saints on a dresser in their bedroom for as long as I can remember. Those will come with me too. The Virgin Mary was for my sister Elvira Mary; St. Anthony for my brother Richard Anthony, and St. Jude was mine. My mother would sit in prayer in front of the statues whenever something big was happening in our family. Neither of my siblings wanted their statues after my parents died. I was happy to become the caretaker of all three saints, and so I will remain.
If clearing out a home after so many years teaches you anything, it is the value of simplicity. The back-breaking task of packing up and carting away the contents of four overbrimming bookcases has convinced me to buy electronic books on a Kindle, or else take them out of the library where I can return them without remorse.
Another lesson: Keep only the clothes I actually wear and donate the rest. My closets contain turtlenecks I wore in college, a pea coat from my high school days. I can’t even begin to come up with a reason why I kept them all these years.
“One of the most important realizations you can come to … is acknowledging that all of these items are just stuff,” says an article titled “How to Let Go of Stuff” on a website called yourbodythetemple.com. As you might imagine, there are all sorts of blogs and websites to help people like me get rid of things. Decluttering is apparently a booming business.
Why do we cling to our possessions? For one thing, we think they enhance our security, comfort and self-image. Guilt often prevents us from giving up gifts or family mementos. Look with gratitude on the possessions you have, The LifeStorageBlog advises. Thank them for the service they gave, then let them go.
The more I clear out the apartment, the more it seems to breathe. I imagine I’m freeing up space for the Holy Spirit to roam, the Spirit I felt released during the home Mass my friends and I enjoyed when I first moved in.
To be sure, saying goodbye to possessions isn’t all about loss and letting go. It reignites memories of places we visited, events in our lives, the people we love and those who love us. It causes us to reflect on our past, and if we are lucky, we will discover a life well-lived.
Like my mother saying goodbye to my brother at the airport, we sometimes have to release what we love. Still we remember. Like her, we eventually see that what we have loved remains always within us.
As spring approaches, can we look for ways to give thanks for the possesions we no longer need, let go of them, and free our living space from so much burden and let it breathe?
