I’m looking at stacks of books, boxes of photos, full garbage cans emptied and their contents hauled to solid waste. There is an organized system to the mess in our living room and guest room.
It all started when I needed surgery and my daughter Anna came from Iowa to help me recuperate. The surgery was delayed six days. Anna gave herself a project to update my guest room, hired the built-in shelves removed and ordered the Ethan Allen top shelves to be brought down from the attic and put upon the bases already in use. While I took a nap, she ordered a trundle bed, mattresses, bedding, rug, etc. It was all her idea — I did not ask for or pick out a thing. She just wanted to be busy awaiting my surgery delay.
On day one of the demolition, the hospital in Jackson called and told me to report to surgery the next day due to a cancellation.
After being gutted by a wonderful robot whose name I didn’t catch and repaired with plastic mesh so as to not set off alarms at airports, I was sent home to boxes I didn’t pack into piles and I did not organize. Anna, having about as much fun as my company allows, determined she could catch a flight the next day and continue on with her planned family vacation and not miss a beat.
Spending these days awaiting surgery with Anna in a fancy-pants hotel in Jackson eating in their dining room and just being in her company, being her mama, being loved by her heart, was the healing I needed more than any surgery. Her visit set me on the long-delayed journey to deal with things and stuff that others left behind.
I have set up my war room around my recliner, the ones the dogs think they own. The big 30-gallon silver garbage can within easy reach, I started with photo albums, boxes of photos and scrapbooks.
My oldest sister, Beth, had no children but many scrapbooks, awards, certificates, vacation photos and three wedding books. I took one last careful look, saying goodbye to these memories, respecting how hard she worked to achieve the honors she received and tossed them. My rule is to only keep things that would mean something to my kids or grandchildren.
Out of an entire scrapbook of a European vacation with my mother, I kept one photo of my mother, aged mid-70s, posing cheesecake, ala Marilyn Monroe on the edge of the Trevi Fountain. The great-grandkids need to know that it’s their history and they can share proof with their counselor if necessary. They have my 6-year-old photo, same pose, Anna’s same 6-year-old pose and Beth and Dorothy’s same adult pose.
My next sister, Dorothy, had one son who had no children but three wives. Her photos were volumes of pets, birds, cats, dogs, cows, horses, parties and houses. I looked through large, medium and small photos and tossed all the above photos and saved the ones with my mom and she and her son and the ones with mom and her four children.
From the photo albums after they moved to Tutwiler, I kept a very select few and gave the rest to my dear friend Luanne Jennings Vance because pictured were many local ladies that she loved, including her mama.
Speaking of Luanne, she will forever go down in my heart as Lucy and Ethel with me. When at my mom’s visitation, she and I searched desperately through her purse for some blush and lipstick to make up my mama. Little did we know my brother told the funeral folks “no makeup, no hairdo,” so my mama, who was always seen with hair up, nails painted red and face fixed by her daughters, looked, well, different. Luanne and I failed in our makeover as others joined us down front, but I remember giggling in my soul on what would have otherwise been an awful day. All of the photos Dorothy took of mom laid out at the viewing and in her closed casket got tossed.
I am the keeper of my aunt Evelyn’s original lambskin diploma from college graduation and a hand-drawn framed drawing of my Uncle T.S. Turner by his granddaughter Leslie Turner, as they mean something to me.
In a large golden ornate frame is Dorothy’s newborn baby photo with four inches of black hair. I’m hanging it in my guest room, I’m not giving it or my two sisters’ baby books to my nephew. They won’t leave this house right now. I’m not tossing my grandmothers’ guest sign-in book from her funeral.
While I’m tossing, I’m gathering and wishing someone in town still had a ruler from my grandfather RP Turner’s office, with the “Delta Land Man” and on reverse, “the best rule is the golden rule.” I would keep it and also make my children and grandchildren keep it.
Really, truly, I’ve tried to weed out books I won’t read or have read and kept. I’ve given books to folks that have interest in that subject. I passed on quilting books and fabric, knitting books, music books and craft books.
Back in 1972, I bought an antique photo album from the Salvation Army, beautiful design outside with velvet inside filled with photos of twins as they grew. I had to save these twins because no one else wanted them. I looked at it often.
I do not believe my grandchildren will guard the newborn baby photo with the black hair. I doubt it will warrant a place in their Iowa basement or attic or outlast their moves in life. Maybe the frame will be kept.
My daughter tells me how she has made hard choices with her paternal grandmother’s keepsakes: her original handwritten recipes to feed 100 for institutions where she was the nutritionist, the original booklet for Depression-era food rationing, coins her daddy collected from Vietnam, and many sets of dinnerware.
When my daughter visits, she has my blessing to take with her whatever she wants now. I still have my art I’ve collected but even Anna is limited in wall space.
I would not dream of having a sale. The one time I had a sale was in the early ’70s and people were too ugly and rude. I had an auction when I moved across country in the ’90s; a Barbie Dream House sold for $60 and my Ethan Allen china cabinet sold for $40. I find more joy in giving and forgetting.
My friends know who they are. My daughter knows who they are. Everybody’s stuff is gonna be gone through someday. No one in my family is gonna fight over anything — that’s not how we roll. They together will decide where it goes, who I have spoken highly of and they know my heart. I just fret who’s gonna want Dorothy’s baby picture in the big gold frame. I would be so happy if one of my grandchildren hung it in their guest room and told a story or two passed along through the ages.
