LETTING GO FOR THE GREATER GOOD

Like most people, I have found it hard to let go of my late parents' things. My head is absolutely certain that they would not for a minute want me to turn my home into a museum of their every possession (as well, for that matter, of my grandparents' things, which they inherited and passed down in their turn). But my heart doesn't buy it. No matter how trivial the item or how little my parents themselves cared about it, it just feel unloving to give it away.

Over time I have found three things that make this easier, though never easy. The first is practice. The second a digital photograph, a strategy I'll write about in another post. The third is a strategy I've come to think of as "letting go for the greater good"--an overly grandiose name, really, but the best I can do.

Letting go for the greater good just means finding a way to honor some possession, and with it my parents' legacies, more in the giving-away of it than in the holding on. When I make the gift, its purpose, and its effect significant somehow, I feel not just comfortable but even good about letting the object go.

My siblings and I did this with the furniture none of us could fit from my parents' home. We gave those extra pieces, many of which were lovely and all of which were practical, to a young woman who had been living in the SafeSpace shelter and was now moving hereslf and her two kids to a new apartment. There could be no doubt, seeing the joy in her face, that giving these things away was much more meaningful than stuffing them somewhere in our own houses. Indeed, I could feel my mother's joy that the table, for example, that she had served so many loving family meals on would now be helping to make such gatherings possible for another mom who had been left with virtually nothing.

My dad's golf clubs were another sticking point. He dearly loved the game, and his bag and all of its accoutrements were just about impossible for me to let go. Until, at least, a friend had his own clubs stolen recently, right in the midst of a year of other financial challenges. How lovely it felt to give him Dad's gear and with it, a temporary substitute he could use until he had the time or money to replace the stolen clubs. I know Dad would approve. My friend promised to donate any clubs he didn't keep to First Tee, and I promised him that none of Dad's eternal putting "yips" were being passed on with his putter.

I guess all I'm saying, at rather great length, is that it's helpful to remember that hanging onto something may not turn out to be the best way we can honor a loved one's memory. Honoring their spirit, their values, their joys is so much more important than keeping a dining-room chair or a nine-iron. At least, that's the way I'd like to be remembered, and I think my parents would agree.