I keep reflecting on the meaning of the Stuff.
As I touch for perhaps the last time something like the wedding invitation for my grandmother's wedding in the 1880s, I feel connected to her. Her dreams, her hopes for a happy life. The expectations of her parents - is this young man a good match? And that means something to me. Pieces of life.
As I pick up a china bowl, I hear my mother's voice telling me about dinners at her mother's table, and how mashed potatoes always went in this bowl. Pieces of life.
As I dust the microscope from my grandfather, the science professor at Columbia and then later at Washburn college, I think of his career and the stories of his work. He started at Washburn on the day my mother was born in 1920. He wept seeing the devastation to his old classroom from the tornado in 1966. I connect to him, to his life. Pieces of life.
Or ... is it?
I remind myself that it is the life itself that is life. Not the detritus that we leave behind. I don't want people hoarding my high school annual or my girl scout sash or my wedding invitation. These aren't "me". Why would I feel that the detritus of past generations should be hoarded, preserved as sacred somehow?
Life is life. Not objects, not papers, not china or silver. These may remind us of a life lived, but we don't need a dump truck full of stuff as if it made the life more real, more valid.
And my expectation is to meet these people in their/our resurrection on earth soon. These people whose Stuff I cared for for so long. What do I need with their detritus when I can see them, know them?
Life is life. Stuff is stuff. Simple.
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