AGING
The Unasked Questions Hidden in Our Possessions
How the things we leave behind may hold the answers to questions we never thought to ask
You’ve probably read about this before. You may be concerned that your aging parent’s home holds so much stuff — stuff that you don’t have room for, stuff you don’t want to inherit. If you are that parent, you may understand that feeling, and not wish to leave all this for your kids to have to deal with.
It’s hard to part with some of it, isn’t it? But what if these objects hold more than just memories? What if they represent the questions we never got to ask?
You may not know it yet, and might never realize it, but these things are hard to give away because there is more to them than memories.
I understand all of it. My wife and I are those aging parents; parents who downsized, but brought too much with us. My wife is of the “We can’t burden our children with this mess” persuasion, while I am more of the “A quick call to the junk men will take care of it when we are gone” opinion.
Neither of us is right.
