Ageing is for the privileged; we don’t all get the same innings. And isn’t that the truth. Planning and packing for my next trip overseas to see my old dad, I thought about this; also, as I do every November, about how many years my Mum has been gone (26) and how strange she would have found this whole ageing thing, since she passed at a youthful 67 and never got to suffer “old age” or enjoy the privilege of it, depending on your viewpoint.
“She would have hated seeing me like this,” my father commented recently (he’s 97 and amazing with a superiorly exercised brain). Yes, she would have struggled with it, had she still been 67 and he was 30 years her senior, but no, truth be told, she would have been a nonagenarian herself by now. (“Oh no,” he observed. “That would not have done at all!”)
My mother struggled mentally with ageing, even at her youthful forever age of 67. She still liked to hang out with young people, enjoy the fashion pages in the paper and the reviews of the new movies and plays coming out. She couldn’t bear the thought of having her hair “set” every week “with the blue hair brigade” or wearing dowdy clothes like her perception of an old person. It was jeans, baseball cap and denim jacket all the way for her. She told me once that a young man tried to “pick her up” (her words) as she got out of the car outside her house. “Young man!” she told me she informed him. “I’m old enough to be your mother, if not your grandmother!” She relayed to me that the young man laughed out loud when she told him this and advised her he “liked them old” before peddling off on his bike. Good grief. She dined out on that one for a while.
But her spirit remained young and buoyant, no matter how the osteoporosis and cancer swiftly consumed her body. I remember thinking at the time that perhaps that is the way to go. Take your bow out when people still remember you bouncing down the road in the afternoon to the matinee in your denim jacket. My sister, likewise. Forever 48 and taking boat trips out on the Med with her friends. We will always remember her that way.
I’ll take whatever bonus years I am granted; is the way I feel. It does not escape me that my mother’s innings are not that far in the future in terms of my current years. I hope for more, I plan for more. I buy the diary for next year and the one after, but I also feel that is a bit like tempting fate with a bold expectancy of longevity in my family. If I was to be diagnosed with a deadly something tomorrow, I would say “Oh well. I had a really good life and, indeed, a fair innings.” There are always reasons to want to stay around longer. Now, my daughter is married, I’d like to meet her child. Now my granddaughter is in middle school, I’d like to see her go to college; but that is mankind, is it not. The way of the beasts we are. We are always peeking, if we dare, around another corner of the lives we hold tight to. Another decade, another year, another sunset and sunrise.
Now I’m in the midst of “death cleaning” (a Swedish practice of thoughtful decluttering so that you are not leaving your “assets” behind for your family members to promptly deliver to the dump), I’m understanding more how my life’s journey has been a lot about collecting and less about giving away. I recently loaded up 6-8 clothing bag donations for a local Young Mom charity, that hasn’t even made a dent on my boxes of clothes under beds and stored elsewhere. Moving house forces you to take a hard look at yourself and your journey to where you currently are. I have adored my house with all my things around me, but it’s time to be lighter, to be OK with less. I literally cannot carry all this stuff across the world with me and, surprisingly, I don’t even want to. Hopefully the children and grandchildren will want a few of our things, though it seems a bit unlikely (when asked that question, our oldest boy’s response was “Nah, I’m good!”)
We are definitely the clutter generation, accumulating stuff from our parents and grandparents and then our friends and family giving us even more stuff during our lifetimes. WE DON’T NEED ANY MORE STUFF! We need time with our loved ones, the occasional thoughtful book (that we can pass along), an adventure perhaps, or even just a nice meal somewhere.
Thinking about the “death cleaning” (and no, I’m not planning on dying any time soon!) I read a piece about Marie Kondo and her clearing out methods. “Does this spark joy?” was the famous line associated with her self-help clean out methods. I can get a lot of joy out of my things — even my old clothing that sparks memories — so that is likely not the guide I should use for myself. I read another line that tickled me, “Will anyone I leave behind be glad I kept this?” Recalling our son’s “Nah, I’m good” comment made me realize that, however close to the bone I go with my possessions, it will likely never be low enough and my children will still be using the dump trailer to get the last of me out of their lives.
But I have started and I have made progress. I cleared two rooms in my house in two days, but clothing and office supplies are easy, aren’t they. The tough stuff is letters from loved ones who are no longer with us. “Emotional energy” is required for these things. Since I was firmly a member of the letter-writing generation and I never threw any away, I told myself that I was allowed to read through a letter again, but unless it was very special, it needed to be thrown away. That felt strange and sentimentally unlike myself, but I did it. The best photos can be put into a nice photo book for future generations to perhaps enjoy, the others should be dumped. I have begun making one photo book a year of the past year’s besties to get them out of my phone and allow my storage a little breather.
Our life’s journey is often pretty cluttered, our shelves seldom organized, yet our intents always good. The reality is that, unless you are moving house or country or you are simply tired of all the stuff around you, you may well leave the “assets” behind to the chagrin of your loved ones. I don’t want to do that to them. I have begun the death cleaning process with the goal of paring down my lifetime of possessions to something that won’t make the kids curse me before I’m really gone.
I just take little nibbles out of a big job and don’t think back on anything that’s going away in the bags. One drawer, one shelf, one box at a time. I have a little more time, don’t I? I think I have a little more time. If not, I had the best intent.
Columnist Lucy Jensen may be reached at lu*************@***il.com.
