Hanging Onto Old Things

                    As Elsa would say, Let It Go…

The other day I was looking up my grandparents names online and their obituaries came up on their cemeteries website.  Strange I know, but there it is.  One name lead to another and another; mothers, fathers, siblings, spouses etc….  I began to look at the pictures of great-aunts and great-uncles that I didn’t know, nor had I even heard of.  Some of them didn’t even have a picture,they only had a gravestone and their name & dates on them.  I realized that I didn’t have to go back very far to find people who are related to me, yet are complete strangers.  They had stories and history and lived lives that I would never be able to find out about or know.

Now my husband and I have been going through the birth pangs of home redecorating the last 5 months and it has been crazy!  New floors, new blinds, new paint on the walls, including new paint on the window jams (and doors & windows door jams too because after painting the walls everything else looked dirty).  We sold off most of our bedroom furniture as well and have slowly been buying replacement pieces.

Fast forward a couple of days… So we finally have the last piece of furniture-a chest of drawers-in place and begin to empty boxes and containers & finally putting things back in order.  As we are going through these items we find little boxes of teeth the tooth-fairy bought and left in our drawers, perfume bottles (man I’ve needed those!), pocket watches, long lost keys, and a couple of little silver boxes that say “My First Curl”.  I bought one for our son and one for our daughter.  I remember buying them about 14 years ago.  Our daughter has her first little lock cut in her box and our son’s is empty.  Why?  Because his was cut 3 years before we bought those cute little containers and it’s in a baggie in his baby book.

ANYway… so Mark hands me this little box and I’m looking at it like, “Really?  Am I really going to go locate Izaak’s lock of hair and put it in here?”  The reality is “NO”, no I’m not.  In fact, who is really going to even be interested in those little locks of hair?  (Okay, well if we are talking scientifically/conspiracy theory you could maybe use it for DNA testing or something, but let’s not go there.)  The kids aren’t going to care about that hair.  I’m sure their children and children’s children aren’t going to be interested either.  So the reality is, that tiny bit of hair is solely for my benefit. Yet I’ve finally realized that while I’m sentimental, I’m just not really that anal about such things.  I mean, for Pete’s sake, I rarely look at their baby books these days.  I’m simply too busy living life to focus on the past.

Now back to those obituaries… In fact, the reality is my great grand-babies and great great grand-babies very likely won’t even know who I am.  They may look back and discover old obituaries or pictures of me, but they won’t know the heartaches and joys I’ve known.  SO WHY DO I WANT TO HOLD ONTO SOMETHING SO FLEETING?  I don’t think I do anymore.  I think I want to simplify life to the point that what I do now has eternal value to me and to those I have the good fortune of meeting.  I want to be a blessing to others right now.

Lord, help me recognize when I’m grasping onto this present world in hopes of holding onto to that which will be burned in the fire.  Please help me move back to You.

As that song Trailer Hitch by Kristian Bush says, “We all end up with nothin’…Everybody tries, tries  to fit it into that ditch, you can’t take it with you when you go, I’ve never seen a hearse with a trailer hitch.”  I wanna leave it all on the field.  :-)

Anna Scantlan
5/21/2015