What does one do with 50+ years of family papers and other stuff? Especially when there are no kids to pass things on to?
Years of photographs of loved ones and of those I cannot recognize. Military discharge papers. Letters from overseas written when Email had not even been imagined.
Yes, jewelry, teacups, furniture, books can be resold or given to others to enjoy. But what do we do with the things that have so much more unique information and meaning to our family and no one else? I have been trying to deal with this dilemma for several years now. This is what happens when the family tree dwindles down to a single twig. And that one younger twig has pretty much cut herself off from the few other family members still around.
A few items may be of interest to various historical societies and to museums. Other things may be only useful if scanned in and offered online for others to peruse. And a lot of it will just need to go into the recycle bin, knowing that at least the resource can be made into something useful for others once again. I really do not want to leave all this for someone else to fool with after I die.
When you are young, things all seem like they will last forever.... be around forever. But you don't realize that everything in our lives is really temporary.... that we ourselves are temporary.
So my head knows that it is time to detach from these things that seemed to make us happy once but are not of interest to others now.
It's just that my heart is not willing to acknowledge all this yet.
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