The Flotsam and Jetsam of Life

Helping to go through my late Aunt's belongings in New Jersey got me thinking about all of the flotsam and jetsam we gather in our lives. She had a two-bedroom condo filled with stuff, closets that you couldn't enter because of the accumulated things inside. And there we were, her relatives, filling some big bags with items to donate to charity, and other big bags to donate to the nearest dump. A much smaller pile here and there was designated for things of financial or emotional value. I found a great photo of her brother, my Dad, crouching on a rock at some military camp (maybe near Miami?) in WWII.

I found a pension card designating my long-gone Grandmother as recipient of a NYC Police pension from my even longer-gone Grandfather's police service. There were also her old business cards, some prescription medicines dating to the 70's, menus and newspaper clippings and photos of course, lots of photos, and Playbills from Broadway Shows and...stuff. Just stuff. While she lived, I suppose there was a possibility that she might want to see that check stub from 1955, or might want to re-read the Playbill from that 1960 show she had so enjoyed. But the moment she passed, at that instant, virtually all of it lost the value that she alone had assigned to it.

It got me looking around my own place (of course), at the boxes stacked in the back of closets, at the "stuff" in the storage shed out back, at the drawers filled with papers and things, at the boxes of cassettes and even reel-to-reel tapes of old radio shows I hosted. If I were to die suddenly after posting this, my friends and relatives would go through the same process. They might wonder briefly why I had kept this or that, but most of the stuff I decided to keep for one reason or another would end up the same as my Aunt's things...headed to a landfill or a charity. The reason for its existance ---me---would be gone.

Sometimes in flea markets you'll see baskets filled with old photos for sale. Is that what will happen to mine? Will my unidentified baby pictures be priced at 50 cents*, then five for a dollar, and then discarded?

And that's what all of this concern is about, no? Mortality and our feeble attempts to leave something behind?

Y'all think all this philosophising has anything to do with me changing jobs after a long time? (-: