Mental Ward

It's been more than a month since Mom passed away. I'm finally getting around to putting away "the stuff" I collected from her home the night we all went over to talk and begin cleaning things out.

Right now, only one thing feels like it has a home -- the cheap joke "Mental Ward" sign we had hanging in our green family room for years, then got moved to the new house to hang over the entrance to the front room there. I put it in the basement, over the closet that houses our books. I think it likes it there.

Another has gone up -- a pen-and-ink drawing I brought home form my mission for Mom and Dad. It took the place of a painting that I vaguely knew had a family connection, but I didn't know what. Found out through the miracle of Facebook that it was painted by one of my cousins' aunts, who also recently passed away. It's back in their family now.

To make room for the stuff, we either have to shuffle and store other stuff. Or get rid of stuff.

I'm glad that painting became a memory -- a person -- rather than more stuff stored in the garage.

I helped our daughter clean her room today. She, like the rest of us, has a lot of "stuff." I look at it and think she can't possibly need any more stuff. I don't need any more stuff either. Because I can look at the vast majority of stuff that I have, and know that it's just that -- stuff. If it were lost in a fire or flood, I'd go out and replace it. But for 99.9% of it, it's just stuff. Much of it is useful stuff, don't get me wrong. But it would only take money to replace it if it were lost.

Only a few things hold memories, and while the stuff that holds those memories is there in the memory itself, the palimpset that is the greater memory shows me the people I was with when those memories were made.

Memories are people. Sometimes memories are triggered by things. But memories are people.

Maybe that's what the scriptures mean it's easier to lead a camel through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter heaven.