Stuff...

It's been an emotional undertaking. One that I wasn't quite prepared for. Not the undertaking, but the emotion that overflowed as I picked through my "stuff." As I've gone through piles and piles and boxes and boxes of stuff, I've come across things I totally forgot I had and others that I knew were there somewhere. Things that I always intended to do something with. I don't know what, but something.

I have a vial of Iraqi sand from Desert Storm in 1991. My niece's husband brought it back for me. I also have a packet of Saudi Arabian sand somewhere too but I haven't come across it yet. A childhood friend of my son brought it back for me. I planned to make a shadow box with mementos from the men I knew who served in that war. But now I threw their letters away. So what am I going to do with the stupid sand?

I feel like I've thrown my life away and nobody will ever know that I had a life outside of the one I live now. That I had a past. That there were people I loved and who loved me back. Isn't that why we save all the stuff we save? To prove to ourselves on some level that we're here and that somebody cares? I mean, look at all those cards and letters and mementos. Hundreds, literally hundreds of cards, letters and notes... from my son, my husband, step-children, grandchildren, siblings, friends, old boyfriends, co-workers... and on and on and on. I never looked at the stuff... once in a blue moon maybe. But somehow, just knowing it was there gave me... what, comfort? I don't know.

We just don't have room for all of this paper. We keep moving it from one spot to another and add more as we go. It's taken over the house. I can't do it anymore. So now it's gone. Most of it anyway. And I sobbed like a baby...