Saturday, April 10

Pass it on

Here's a photo of a pretty hyacinth I saw outside a rest stop in Indiana yesterday, on my way back home from Chicago visiting my mom.  It looks like curled paper on a gift.

My mom, age 94, has done a great job shredding old papers and de-cluttering over the past couple of years.  I would love for her to now give away the mementoes she intends to later pass along to friends and family, so she can see their happy reactions when they receive the gifts.  However, she wants them to be special gifts after she is no longer with us.  That's the way she wants to do it.

How do you want to share your special things?  Give them away now or hold onto them until you're gone?  I say, do it now.

It may not make sense to everyone, but to me it's like remembering what any pleasure feels like, when you don't directly experience it anymore.  Now that I don't eat lots of sweets my mom will sometimes seem hurt when I don't eat her delicious date nut cake or a store-bought cookie she especially likes.  After being pressed to eat it, I'll sometimes tell her the truth--I remember how wonderful her pecan tassies taste at Christmas-time, but I don't care for any right now.  Give me a couple of seconds and my mouth will relive every molecule of the cookie, or the homemade cake, and I can enjoy the memory.  I don't need to have it in my hand, or my mouth, to savor it.

Can we give up a framed picture that a friend always admires, or a decorative tea set given to us by a departed relative so many years ago?  I don't mean to give everything up and have a bare home, but how about a few things?  It will make our homes open up and we'll feel freer.  When we remember where we bought it or who gave it to us we'll always have that memory; and now someone else will enjoy it as well.

Enough sermonizing--I'll leave you with an interesting article about de-cluttering services I saw on the Internet today:
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/109285/how-a-pro-helps-tackle-clutter