A Slow Swedish Death

Obi Wan started it.

Someone had laid a truth bomb on me that I was struggling with. What it was isn't important other than it was the catalyst for me to do a little retail therapy. I had seen this particular Obi Wan collectible at a comic book store for a price that made me blink a few times rapidly and walk away, yet I couldn't stop thinking about him. After all, Alec Guinness was the catalyst that made me decide I'd go ahead and go to this silly Star Wars movie just out since I was a big fan of his. The rest is history, and I'm sitting here in a Star Wars shirt right now, a big and heavily-invested-in-Star Wars-collectibles-nerd. So I wanted that particular Obi Wan, and I wanted him bad. I just needed an excuse; had the truth bomb not exploded, something else would have come along to give me the excuse. My daughter suggested I could find him online for less, so I did. $70 less to be exact. And he arrived, in all his glory, a 6:1 scale, hand painted, limited edition marvel, on Saturday. To make room for him, I had to move a lamp, and figure out where to store the lamp, which meant I really needed to re-organize a little annex off my office we call the Hobby Hole, and as I was going through that process I had to ask myself over and over as I picked things up and moved things around, "Why exactly do I have this?"

In the great debate of nature vs. nurture I am an interesting case study. Not genetically linked to either parent, I carry forward so many of their personality traits, both good and bad - but, bluntly, mainly bad - that I think I sort of shut the door on any other argument. Nurture wins the day, and Mother was a full on hoarder. There was an understandable reason for it. Not unlike many young people who had their formative years during the Depression, she spent the rest of her life over-compensating for those years of want. While I bemoaned that fact from the time I was young all the way to trying to clean out her things after she died, and even though I never wanted for much, I am more like my mother than I would care to be.

My daughter watched as I struggled with the fallout from my mother's hoarding. I could tell so many stories, but for now suffice it to say, while I don't think my daughter is waiting or anxious for the time when she has to help me downsize, or worse still, when she has to clear out my things because I'm gone, it does admittedly cross her mind and she's more than well aware how much stuff I have. And she's also aware of how I'm wired.  I adore estate sales, and I'm in the prime location for them. Pittsburgh is a city with an older population. I love sports collectibles in addition to all the Star Wars stuff, and don't forget Lord of the Rings, because I certainly don't forget it while procuring things I just "have to have". Now add all the stuff I gather with all the stuff I inherited as the only child, and the things my husband was bequeathed over time. Not unlike a lot of people in our age bracket. As life goes on, we just stuff our space with all our stuff.  There's a reason I guess stuff is called stuff.

But I know my daughter worries about what a mess she'll be left with, and I know what it was like to deal with my mother, and don't want to repeat that cycle, so I was intrigued as Swedish Death Cleaning became a "thing". I decided I needed to make it my thing. As just one small example, do I really need to have a picture my mother took in 1970 of a bouquet of flowers sitting on her living room coffee table? No, I do not. Nor do I need a photo of a group of young women with that coveted flip up hairstyle singing in that same living room at a DAR luncheon she threw?  I don't know who any of them are.  No, I do not.

And why in the world did I keep this? Why did Mom for that matter? Other than she kept absolutely everything that is.

Not only keep it but haul it from place to place including across country - that package of "Quickies" has more miles on it than my car. 

I don't know about you, but some stuff that just defies logic stays for so long out of some weird guilt (e,g., "Mother loved this, so she would want me to keep it."). Some out of sentimentality. A lot of it falls into that bucket actually. Some because during the course of a life sad events happen, and looking too closely at certain things dredges that up and it's easier to just pack it up and haul it here, there and everywhere. But at some point, someone has to face it and handle it. It should be me, right?

I consider the name badge in
the trash a total win

Whatever the reason, it's hard to let go. And I have to be in a "mood", as I described it to my daughter this past weekend. I managed to convince myself to throw away a name tag of my dad's from a reunion he attended in 1989.  But I couldn't bring myself to toss his Elk's membership card. Maybe in the next "mood".

And I as I poured over old photos and stationery to try and cull out some space in the Hobby Hole, I did get emotionally tweaked.  I ran across a box full of my mother's photos, including a lot that were taken when my children were small and she lived in Washington, PA. So all these happy family photos of summer vacations where the biggest worry is when I'd get to go to Steelers training camp are caught in time smiling out at me, but now so, so many people in those photos are either gone, including unfortunately my oldest daughter, or are not well. I tell people all the time that I hope the memories of their loved ones brings them comfort, and I am sincere. But I'm here to tell you it doesn't always.  Sometimes memories are ghosts and they haunt you.

But anyway, this is all a long way to say, I've decided I'll take my Swedish Death Cleaning project a bit at a time, in other words I'll bank on the trust that there will be a tomorrow. Maybe over the next couple of decades I'll actually get it down to a dull roar. On the other hand, now I know there's a young Obi Wan from the same company...and really, don't you think I need them both?

So make me feel better about myself.  What do you have too much of, and how are you doing with the idea of getting rid of it as you get older?

(And...if you're a stranger reading this and think you might just want to help yourself to my Obi Wan, remember I collect things, including BIG DOGS.  They're happy to greet you appropriately.)