Our legacy is something that seems to get a lot of attention in our later lives. What is left behind when we’re no longer around. And there are so many ways to leave a legacy – children, businesses, movements, buildings, stories…
But what about the actual “stuff” we leave behind?
What happens to all our stuff, all our belongings, all the things we’ve gathered, curated, loved, and cared for in our lives? And what do those who are left behind do with those things?
You don’t tend to give this much thought until someone very close to you dies. The kind of close to you where you are actually involved with figuring out what happens to their stuff after they’ve gone.
One way to think about it is that they are just things. Inanimate objects to be moved around to some next place or another.
Another way, though, is to think of them as little pieces of a life. Little stories, little mementos, little milestones and signposts, little Easter eggs left behind that make the mosaic picture of a life.
And those are much harder to part with.
Since my aunt’s passing, I’ve thought a lot about my “stuff”. What someone would think about it if they had to go through it and decide what to do with it. If they would see the same specialness that I do (which hardly seems possible) or if it would seem simply like a room full of things to be dealt with.
Which, interestingly enough, makes me look at my own things differently. Do they REALLY represent me and the story of my life? Or are they simply little pieces of things that I captured along the way and infused with meaning that does not inherently live in them?
I don’t know the answer to any of this (including what to do with all the STUFF around me all the time!) but my attachment to things and their perceived meaning has become a lot more obvious in recent months. We’ll see where that leads me next…
