POSSESSIONS

Somewhere between being a sentimental hoarder and a minimalist, I hold onto possessions that have meaning for me and chuck out everything else.  Or so I think.  To be honest, there are things on my shelves, in cupboards and in drawers that I simply don’t think about enough to know whether I still need them.   Perfectly serviceable underwear that I just don’t happen to have worn for a couple of years?  Books I’m never going to read again but remind me of a particular time of life? I’d rather not think about the logic of keeping them, just in case the obvious answer is to get rid of them …. and I’m not quite ready for that yet.

In the spirit of What am I ready to get rid of? I gave away a collection of old buttons recently.  They had accumulated in a pretty bag when I cut buttons off old clothes, or came as extras with new clothes, and a few were handed down from previous generations.  These buttons had done nothing for at least five years and, because I mend but rarely sew, I couldn’t envisage ever using them again.  I am only too happy to pay a local seamstress for the occasional alteration to my clothes, so I offered these buttons to her.  She was delighted with the offer and I duly gave them to her.  Decluttering and a small act of giving all in one go - hoorah!

However, when my daughter visited she noticed the missing bag.  Oh no!  It was the same bag of buttons she’d played with as a child, and her daughter might very well enjoy playing with them now.  Could I please get them back?   (Yes I could, falling over myself to apologise to the recipient who, luckily for me, had saved buttons from her own grandmother’s time and appreciated my daughter’s sentiment.)

This small example of what downsizing and decluttering might look like left me thinking about possessions, their accumulation and meaning - not just for myself, but for others too.  It turns out that my possessions say something about me and my life.  It is one thing to think about leaving things to others in a Will or for relatives to distribute after I’m dead: it is another thing to throw away, give away, sell things that I have decided are no longer of any importance in my current life, or would be better off in someone else’s possession.  A shedding of artefacts and memorabilia, an emptying out of everything that is not utilitarian, feels like stripping naked - an old body in an old house, no longer in need of adornment or sentiment, bravely stepping forward without those comforting attachments.  Watching others downsize, I applaud those who divest themselves with good grace, moving into a smaller space - literally and metaphorically - without holding onto their possessions.  

(There is another process, of course: going through the possessions of a loved-one who has died or gone into residential care.  I see newly bereft friends struggling through the pain of this, taking their time, choosing whether to do this in solitary moments or with the support of others, treasuring the memories brought by each item but confronting unbearable grief.)  

As I recoil from too much shedding too soon, I try to remember that I am the lucky recipient of things given by older people who’ve gone before, often given with generosity and love - many of them items I could not have afforded myself, or that say something about that person’s place in my life, and mine in theirs.  I have pottery from a relationship that ‘went to pot’ (ha!); blue Pelican paperbacks that I and so many of my women friends pored over in our 20s; LPs that still jolt or melt the heart; rocks collected from foreign travel; pictures and drapes on the walls that evoke precious colleagues and old friends; a beautiful blue vase; two silk lampshades; a set of my father’s drawings.  More recently, I have purchased furniture I really like - a chaise longue, a church pew - gifts to myself that make me smile in my old age.  These things are as much part of me as the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the food I eat, even if they do nothing but sit there, looking at me as I look at them, letting me know that this was, and is, a life.  

Have I given enough to others I wonder?  I think not.  When I return for another go at life (!) I shall be terribly wealthy, and will set more store by buying beautiful things and making large unexpected gifts to others, seeing friends smile at the accuracy of my presents - just as others have done for me in this life.  I know, I know… materialism and all that.  But now that I contemplate the inevitable loss of everything, so the occasional beauty of things lifts my spirits.  Beauty, tokens of friendship and love, all important - even knowing that they must all disappear in the end.