Sorting

Going through another person’s stuff tells you a whole lot about the person whose stuff you’re going through. Right now, that’s my mom.

What I’m learning is what I already knew: she loved flowers, gardening, her relatives living and dead. She loved Democracy, embroidery, physics, and math. She loved her children, her husband, her parents, her siblings, her students, her neighbors, her friends, and her faith.

As I go through her things, I feel admiration, love, and in the case of her scientific mind, seriously impressed.

All of this sorting makes it crystal clear that my own things will be gone through someday. Most will be tossed, but whoever does it will know a whole lot more about me too. Like my mom, I hope they’ll see that I loved my life.