Hakiu on the move

Surrounded by opened boxes of our lives’ ancient relics (photos – some of which we no longer even know the names of the people, animals, places, or occasion – old knick-knacks, memorabilia, and just plain junk) we separate and pack away again.

Or we place stuff not to be repacked in the growing piles; one each for Sally Ann, and various friends to whom we will give our valuable treasures, and one each for recyclable, and just plain old trash to be tossed. Is this all life amounts to, piles of stuff with memory only value attached?

I have many more times than once gone through this process when moving to a new place. It is always a melancholy experience. One cannot help but feel some kinship to the treasure in piles that signify life lived and gone.

Must one always toss away stuff with the attached memories? Will the memories return after the artifact of the memory is gone to some nowhere? Nevertheless, alas, it becomes a simple practical process; we cannot avoid moving what is not truly valuable, as we are paying for the move. That old twirling baton, or that old antique dresser that belonged to mother, must be worth their weight in coins, else off with them (with apologies to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka, Lewis Carroll ).

However, as unsettling as this pre-move purging process is, it does not have the true sadness of the similar process when a loved one passes. I have helped with this more than once. It is truly sad to know that all the physical stuff that comprised one’s life is of so little value to the living. Must life always be reduced to piles of stuff?

Wait, my spirit says, all this process is the prerequisite for moving onto to a more hopefully situation. In this case, our final, I hope, retirement place; a home we truly love already.

And, so it is with the life lived and gone from this plane. They are already there, in a much better place seeing face-to-face, no longer in darkness but with light shed on all life’s important questions, and truly do not need their old useless stuff.

Therefore, it is right to give or throw most of it away. The rightful owner no longer needs it to make their life have meaning, as they have arrived at the place where all the physical of this life has no value at all in the light of the true meaning of a life well and faithfully lived.

So, open, sort, and pack
or pile shall be my task with
a new found smile all the while
(with apologies to Hakiu poets everywhere.)