Stuff

Why is stuff so important to us? Over the past week I have watched my family divide stuff. My grandfather passed away 14 years ago, last week my grandmother fell and broke her hip. She has dementia, and is confused most of the time. After her fall her children decided a nursing facility would be the best place for her to receive the care she now needs. Since this has happened there has been a lot of talk over who gets what out of her house. It's a little crazy. My grandmother wrote names on the bottom of most things, but there are things that are going to different people than who is actually written on them. And I don't care. It's stuff. I have a tea pitcher that use to sit on the counter in my grandmothers kitchen. It's broken and now has flowers in it, but that will forever remind me of my childhood at my grandmothers house. I don't need a bunch of things in the house that was hers to remind me of her. That one thing will do.

However.......... 

Today I moved Joshua's things. I almost lost it. A single box of diapers and I had tears on my eyes. A box marked "boy clothes" that I had gotten just for him. A box that says "baby memories" that the hospital gave me, holds his foot prints and pictures from the hospital. Things that were his that he never used. Things that hold no memories. He never wore those clothes, so why is it heartbreaking to look at them? There are a few blankets that he was never wraped in, there is a bottle he never drank from,  diapers I've never opened. The only memories I have with this stuff is when I bought it. But I can't let it go. It's mine. Those things are his. I should have needed those diapers. I should have been putting these clothes on the swap page because he out grew them already. 

I never shopped for the girls. I thought it would be easier. It's not. I want to do a shadow box for them but I don't have little socks for them to put in it the way I want. Maybe I will just buy a pack and use them in there. Is that crazy? Buying things for your child who has died? 

Stuff... Things.... Memories.... The lack of memories....  Life and death..... It's just stuff.

My dad and my 2 grandmothers at my wedding.