What Really Matters
It was Elizabeth who arranged the gallery because everybody was there. Cheerful pink and popping orange, thoughtful blues and soothing green canvases winked all around my parents’ verdant, shaded yard. It was a rodeo arena of art. And we were there to choose what to take home with us.
“Ooh, I like this one with the chickens,” said Elizabeth. “Unless you want it, of course.” She turned quickly to me as if to apologise for wanting the best painting of the lot.
“It’s OK, Bessie” I reassured her, “I’ve already put my name in for that one.” I indicated an interesting architectural study of San Francisco done in mauve, scarlet, and lots of rich purple. “Unless YOU want that one.”
And so it went. Eighteen siblings and offspring perusing the collection, each eager to save a colorful memento of my mother’s life of art but equally concerned that everyone got their own favorite.
Fifteen years later, my father's life ended and the same family gathered to do the final sorting. We faced rescuing or discarding my parents’ life’s accumulation before we sold the family home.
Our father Roger had been a professional lens designer and a lifelong train buff. His treasures had a different appeal. Brother Jim wanted the machine shop lathe, drill presses, and radial arm saw. He also claimed the Terrific Pacific, a narrow-gauge track and train that wound around the perimeter of the property behind trees and bushes. After all, first we, then subsequent generations of kids, had circumnavigated the yard on that wonder for sixty years.
Brother Mike scooped up the telescope out of the observatory and the leftover windsurfer parts. Mom and Roger both took great pride in windsurfing into their seventies!
However, we looked askance at my father’s extensive collection of broken toasters and marginally functional motors. He would claim you could fix them, make something cool out of them! So, brother Ben hauled load after load to the metal recycling plant, easily surpassing 4000 pounds of scrap metal. (What an inheritance!) Cousin John did claim a hundred pound rusted differential the size of a cat that required two strong men to lift it.
Every “save” required an investment of travel time and space in the car and more space at home to store the acquisitions. None of us lived closer than a hundred miles away. No one's house had unlimited storage capacity. But would we regret tossing something just because space was limited?
Finally, in the waning days before the dumpster was removed, the last four of us surveyed the detritus after the big stuff was removed. We inevitably came to last minute Caesar-like decisions: to save or to toss? Decisions now boiled down to what details really mattered to each individual.
Oscar performed reclamation of all historical documents and uniforms. I secretly squirreled away some dishware that had graced our family table and a doll handmade by my best friend from second grade, Janie.
I cleared some old sheets from the linen closet. “Oh, make sure you recycle those!” chided Bessie.
Clearing the refrigerator was easy, I determined. But then I aimed the four small plastic containers of three-week-old restaurant salsa for the trash can.
“No,” pleaded Bessie. “We can take that home!”
When she wasn’t looking, I slipped them under the top layer of the trash in the garbage bin. Bossy Bessie, I thought.
I scooped up the small mirror that had perched next to the outside door in which we had been able to last-minute -check our appearance for nearly forty years. As I did, I caught sight of Bessie carefully folding up the cheap, temporary paper window shades we had taped up to prevent strangers from studying our emptying house.
Sheesh, I thought. But to each her own.
And finally, it was done. Really done. The house was dusty, but empty.
Ben and Bessie, Oscar and I took a walk around the property to gather in our last memories. No need of the dumpster in that department. We strolled through my mom’s former vegetable garden and admired the octagonal chicken coop with the now flapping roof. Bessie cried as we visited Roger’s workshop and observatory one last time.
“I miss them so much,” she snuffled.
So, I reminded them that we haven’t lost them or the house, we will just carry them with us in our memories. They are part of us, each in our own way, and we will carry them with us for life.
And that is the ultimate inheritance.
Absolutely no regrets.
“Ooh, I like this one with the chickens,” said Elizabeth. “Unless you want it, of course.” She turned quickly to me as if to apologise for wanting the best painting of the lot.
“It’s OK, Bessie” I reassured her, “I’ve already put my name in for that one.” I indicated an interesting architectural study of San Francisco done in mauve, scarlet, and lots of rich purple. “Unless YOU want that one.”
And so it went. Eighteen siblings and offspring perusing the collection, each eager to save a colorful memento of my mother’s life of art but equally concerned that everyone got their own favorite.
Fifteen years later, my father's life ended and the same family gathered to do the final sorting. We faced rescuing or discarding my parents’ life’s accumulation before we sold the family home.
Our father Roger had been a professional lens designer and a lifelong train buff. His treasures had a different appeal. Brother Jim wanted the machine shop lathe, drill presses, and radial arm saw. He also claimed the Terrific Pacific, a narrow-gauge track and train that wound around the perimeter of the property behind trees and bushes. After all, first we, then subsequent generations of kids, had circumnavigated the yard on that wonder for sixty years.
Brother Mike scooped up the telescope out of the observatory and the leftover windsurfer parts. Mom and Roger both took great pride in windsurfing into their seventies!
However, we looked askance at my father’s extensive collection of broken toasters and marginally functional motors. He would claim you could fix them, make something cool out of them! So, brother Ben hauled load after load to the metal recycling plant, easily surpassing 4000 pounds of scrap metal. (What an inheritance!) Cousin John did claim a hundred pound rusted differential the size of a cat that required two strong men to lift it.
Every “save” required an investment of travel time and space in the car and more space at home to store the acquisitions. None of us lived closer than a hundred miles away. No one's house had unlimited storage capacity. But would we regret tossing something just because space was limited?
Finally, in the waning days before the dumpster was removed, the last four of us surveyed the detritus after the big stuff was removed. We inevitably came to last minute Caesar-like decisions: to save or to toss? Decisions now boiled down to what details really mattered to each individual.
Oscar performed reclamation of all historical documents and uniforms. I secretly squirreled away some dishware that had graced our family table and a doll handmade by my best friend from second grade, Janie.
I cleared some old sheets from the linen closet. “Oh, make sure you recycle those!” chided Bessie.
Clearing the refrigerator was easy, I determined. But then I aimed the four small plastic containers of three-week-old restaurant salsa for the trash can.
“No,” pleaded Bessie. “We can take that home!”
When she wasn’t looking, I slipped them under the top layer of the trash in the garbage bin. Bossy Bessie, I thought.
I scooped up the small mirror that had perched next to the outside door in which we had been able to last-minute -check our appearance for nearly forty years. As I did, I caught sight of Bessie carefully folding up the cheap, temporary paper window shades we had taped up to prevent strangers from studying our emptying house.
Sheesh, I thought. But to each her own.
And finally, it was done. Really done. The house was dusty, but empty.
Ben and Bessie, Oscar and I took a walk around the property to gather in our last memories. No need of the dumpster in that department. We strolled through my mom’s former vegetable garden and admired the octagonal chicken coop with the now flapping roof. Bessie cried as we visited Roger’s workshop and observatory one last time.
“I miss them so much,” she snuffled.
So, I reminded them that we haven’t lost them or the house, we will just carry them with us in our memories. They are part of us, each in our own way, and we will carry them with us for life.
And that is the ultimate inheritance.
Absolutely no regrets.