What does it mean to have it all?? I don't need a big house or a Mozzerati to be happy. To me having it all would mean having Martha Stewart closets.... AHHH! I would love to hire a housekeeper or an organizer to do this, but you know it's really the kind of thing that no one else can do for you.
Wouldn't it feel good to have a place for everything and everything in it's place? Wouldn't it be lovely if I hadn't had to look six places for a stapler this morning while I was trying to work on the taxes?? Not having to look for the stapler would mean that my idea of "having it all" would require the complicit cooperation of little c who absconds with my stuff... sorry mom!
I am a piler. I have piles of really important crap that no one but me is going to care about. I told C last night. I have all this stuff.. letters, books, photos, papers that make up my existence on the planet, but there is already so much of it that when I die the girls are going to hire the biggest dumpster and chuck it all as fast as they can.
I remember when we moved my grandparents into a retirement home. I was too young and dumb to think about it and just assumed that I was being so helpful to show up and help. My grandpa was in a grumpy mood that day... now that I think of it, how could he not have been? He sat there in an armchair while his grandchildren went through his stuff and threw away all the things, the gathered accouterments of the life he had lived as a strong and vital independent man. And, even though he retired to a better ordered situation.. it was a change and I wonder what must have been going through his mind that day. Someday I may know.
I had an old, very old, tape player in my hand and I recall asking my grandfather if he would like me to throw it out or if he would like me to donate it to good will. He snapped at me, the only time he ever snapped at me, and said that he wanted me to give it to one of the neighbors. I looked at that old dusty player and thought that he was losing it a little, but now I don't. Now I think that he wanted to give his things away to someone who would appreciate them and remember him.
But, when all is said and done.. no one wants our stuff, our treasures maybe... but not our stuff, so I might as well chuck my junk now rather than have poor c and l looking through it for years and years. If I don't do something soon, I will have to buy a big house and then I'll have to move all this crap.
I want my daughters to remember me for all the fun we had together. I had some fun times at my grandpas house... like all the times grandpa made us homemade ice cream and root beer. I loved the times that I helped bring in the harvest of his beautiful garden and helped grandma cut the corn off the cob and freeze it for storage. I loved seeing him in his cowboy hat.. I think my dad gave it to him.. it was just like the one Pres. Hinckley wore in the Pioneer Day parade. I remember a feeling of complete freedom in his big back yard guarded in front with a big hedge of greenery with orange berries. Now, I think of him and grandma too... every time I pass a pyracantha, but I don't wish that I still had his old dusty tape player.
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