Keep The Memory, Not The Stuff

Tonight is a particularly difficult one.  I can’t seem to stop crying – really crying.  Although I often shed tears over the situation with Gram, I don’t often sob.  Tonight I’m sobbing.

Every memory of Christmas that I have – from my earliest to last year - has involved Gram in some way.  Whether it was her dressing up as Santa when we were kids and handing out gifts or her cooking her amazing Christmas turkey dinner, she’s always been there.  Cookie baking, tree hunting, decorating, (the dreaded) Christmas shopping, going the Christmas Eve service at St. Catherine’s to listen to the guy play the guitar that she always liked so much, are just some of the Christmas memories I have.    

I went to the basement today to bring out my Christmas decorations for my own tree (that I finally bought).  As I was pulling boxes off the shelves in the storage area next to my laundry room, I noticed 4 other boxes on the bottom shelf.  I have known these boxes were there and for the last 5 years, I have seen them in passing, but would quickly go about my business, not wanting to deal with them.  I had no recollection what was in them – probably blocked out of my memory by choice.  Those boxes have always been something I’d deal with “someday.”

That someday became today as I decided to open those boxes.  I opened them delicately, as if I had never seen them before and tentatively, knowing how it was likely to affect me.  In them I found all sorts of things from Gram’s house wrapped in newspaper and packed in the exact order of how I frantically proceeded through the house room by room as I packed back then.  I moved frantically then because I knew if I slowed enough to think about the magnitude of what I was doing, I would have broken down emotionally and not been able to complete the task at hand.  Each box that I looked in today was packed from a specific room and area.  And I remembered exactly where every item was back then when I picked it up to pack it.  For example, one box contained items from a specific section of Gram’s kitchen counter - candy dish, can opener, etc.  As I unwrapped each item, I pictured, in my memory, what things looked like back then and for years before.  The memories came flooding back - 42 years of memories of Gram and her house and all of the holidays, birthdays, picnics, Steeler Sundays, or just quiet evenings that I spent there.  Most of my life was spent at that house!  At that moment, I realized the magnitude of what happened 5 years ago.

And so I sobbed.  Then I went to visit Gram.  She was asleep, but I just sat quietly with her.  I get strength from her; I always have – just being in her presence.  How ironic it is that the strength I get from her helps me to deal with her own circumstances.  I returned home and sobbed again.  I sobbed through a whole bag of Hershey’s Kisses.

Tonight I am left with the knowledge that I can’t hold on to things – that memories are not attached to the items in those boxes.  Rather, my memories of Gram and my relationship with her go far beyond any “stuff.”  As difficult as it is, I know that I will need to let go of the “stuff.”  I will, however, always hang on to the memories.