By Nancy Gonzalez

My mother died on March 25. It’s just now that my siblings and I are going though her belongings. She told us we couldn't begin sorting it until after she died. Box upon box has been in storage while she was in long term care.  And I do mean boxes. After we invited her friends to sort through things and take anything they wanted, and after we salvaged anything for recycling or charity, we still needed seven VW Beetle-sized dumpsters to dispatch the rest.  It wasn’t just her stuff; my father had died 18 years ago, and she still had a lot of his things, mostly obsolete or broken. He had a carpenter’s level that had all the bubble liquid drained out of it. He had CB radio equipment—I didn’t even know what it was. My engineer husband had to identify it for me. 

Maybe it’s because she was in the cohort whose childhood was shaped by the Great Depression; she was a saver. She had old coffee cans from brands of coffee that no longer exist. There were dozens and dozens of used Cool Whip containers.  She had a box approximately 2 X 2 X 3 that was completely filled with buttons!  She had them separated by color in sub-containers.  (Does anyone out there need hundreds of buttons?)  There were enough stuffed animals to fill a standard elevator car up to my waist. This is probably the best example of her penchant for saving; she still had three books of WW II ration stamps with several coupons still left.  Ironically, these I’m keeping.  

She must have known she was failing, because she’d spent time labeling her treasures. Almost all the items marked “Save” were not worth saving, such as a set of cast-iron fry pans, which went to the scrap metal recycler. There were afghans with unraveling yarn. Chipped teacups and saucers.  Clothes that supposedly had “lots of wear left in them” but instead had set-in stains and stretched-out, crumbling elastic.  She must have had every Christmas and birthday card she’d ever received, many of which were signed by people I’d never heard of; any of the familiar signees were long since passed-on. There were lots of faded plastic flowers.  And perfumes that smelled like insect repellant.  Then there were the weird vases.  She had a vase she prized that was in the shape of a peacock.  It was mottled turquoise in color and one of the ugliest pieces of pottery I’ve ever seen.  I don’t know how many times she said, “Don’t throw that out!”  We threw it out. 

What has become painfully apparent is that the things we collect in our lifetime, unless it’s Sotheby’s material, will not be prized by anyone else. My husband collects slide rules. There probably are few people under 50 who even know what these are. I collect some weird things such as old kitchen utensils from the 1930s; the ones with the red, wooden handles.  My grandmother (whom I adored) used these, and so I associate them with her. They’re scrap metal to anyone else.  Even things with a dollar value may get junked by someone else.  I used to have an impressive collection of dishes, over 200 pieces, of vintage Fiestaware.  This stuff fetches top dollar on Ebay.  About 5 years ago, I asked my son “When I pass on, what will you do with my Fiesta dishes?”  He said, (I’m not kidding) “I’m going to use them for skeet practice.”  I sold them.  Smart aleck.  I got the last laugh:  he was impressed when an antiques dealer gave me a check for $2000.00 for them.

There are still three big boxes of Mom’s stuff to sort through that I won’t have time to tackle until prime indoor-activity weather next winter.  They are full of papers, photos, memorabilia and ephemera that contain God-only-knows what.  When I opened these boxes, there was a curious note on the top of each of their contents: “Nancy will sort.”  I know why she assigned this to me.  I’m the only one who will look at each photo and skim each document.  Of her four kids, I am the one whom God endowed with the tug of the sentimental.  My sibs are all of sterling character, each is a credit to the human race and I adore them all.  But they would’ve thrown everything out, including the WWII ration coupons.  I got the sentiment; they got the smarts.

There are still a couple of my dad’s possessions that I didn’t have the heart to toss—yet.  He caught two enormous Walleyed Pikes in Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods in 1967 and ‘68, weighing in at 10.5 and 11.2 pounds, respectively. They are taxidermy-stuffed and mounted and ready to go on the wall of some sportsman’s cabin.  He didn’t know my middle name or my birthday, but he could proudly recite the catch dates and weights of these fish at a moment’s notice. The first person who tells me he or she would appreciate them, gets them. 

Sorting through parents’ possessions is difficult; when there are fond memories—and also when there were none. My father was emotionally unreachable. And I thought my mother was—until my sister found a strange manila folder—that she almost threw out.  My whole life, there didn’t seem to be much I did that made her happy.  She thought my gregarious personality and facility with humor were unladylike.  Against her wishes, I didn’t go into nursing and instead majored in psychology and then a Master’s in Family Life Education.  Every decision I made was wrong, and she always let me know.  I thought I was one of her life’s biggest embarrassments.

Then I opened the mysterious manila folder.  It was a file on me.  It had my undergraduate transcript (with the psychology major!) and several of my published op-ed articles (mostly humor!) During the 47 years we were both on earth, she couldn’t tell me that it was OK to study the liberal arts or to laugh uproariously. What a pity. She must have known I would write about all of this someday, and perhaps even wanted me to, because she told me--unsoliticed--that that I could write about her after she was gone.

My lessons learned?  Get rid of stuff. Out of curiosity, I just priced mom’s favorite peacock vase on Ebay—it’s listed at $14.99 and has no bids. By the time I’m 65, the red-handled utensils and the slide rules will be gone. My only child is not sentimental. If I wrote “Eric will sort” inside a box, he would think it’s his mother’s posthumous joke and enjoy one last laugh on me as he heaves it into a dumpster.  “Oh that Mom!  She was a firecracker!”  

Most importantly, I learned not to leave anything unsaid.  If you love someone, say it.  If you’re proud of a friend or family member, tell ‘em. Don’t keep it in an undisclosed manila file.  In the rush to the estate sale—or the dumpster—there’s a good chance it might get tossed unopened. There are just not many Nancys who will sort.