All That Stuff!

When an old person like myself gets ready to move to new quarters he gets the rare chance to review his life from way back when and it offers one the opportunity to see where you've been and what you did.  It's all there in the
boxes of pictures, personal papers and bric-a-brac collected throughout a long
and eventful life.  Usually, children, other family members or friends have the
task of sorting through all the debris of a person's history after he dies. No one engaged in this thankless task has a clue as to who is in the photo or what
that picture or paper really meant in that life.  It is just a thankless task
that must be done and it is a back breaking trek to the city dump. Not so, when
the old person has to venture among the stuff, collected and saved during his
lifetime.  These bits and pieces of things are real life memories that become
alive, one piece of paper at a time.  One soiled photo of a father, mother or
favorite aunt who died ages ago, but who become alive even for just one moment.

I began looking through all that stuff today and I must confess that I relived
at least 70 years of my past as I lovingly held pieces of my life, each by each.
My eyes watered frequently after looking at an array of photos that were hidden
in card board boxes for years that I knew were there but couldn't summon up the courage to open.  My wonderful aunts on my mother's side,in their 1930's outfits, who I loved dearly, and remembered how they watched over and pampered me and cooked such tasty meals whenever we visited. The reports I wrote on my jobs, how hard I worked to please everyone...vanity, all is vanity.  Whatever happened to the high school I developed at Lower Brule? That dusty proposal in a cardboard box tells the whole story but no one can know how much it meant to me.  All that stuff in the boxes that I sorted through made up the story of my life, however, I alone, can live it again, I alone, can laugh, cry or cringe at each memento. No one who waded through these dusty boxes could know what all that stuff meant. It, in many ways,tells the story of my life.  What do I keep and what do I discard?  It probably makes little difference to others but it tells me so many things that I can now recall but our new home is too sparse for those dusty boxes and the memories they contain will have to remain with me.