Tuesday, October 15, 2019

treasure

 Who knew that growing older would come with time? You get up every day and it's pretty much like the last. Oh sure there are distractions, work, vacations, holidays, sickness and stuff like that. Then one day you wake up to discover you are not as young as you used to be. It comes as a bit of a surprise. Then you get used to that idea, being older, and begin to embrace that. You get use the preface, at my age, as a qualifier. It can work to your advantage. Not as much in todays' world as in the past but still. Today we are seniors, as long as we are mobile anyway, if not, we are elderly! I don't think anyone wants to be elderly. It's like being called a spinster, you just don't hear that term used much anymore.
 Now I'm no different than anyone else, I figure I'll be around tomorrow. There is always tomorrow. Well, even if you aren't there, there will still be tomorrow. The objective, of course, is to make it! And if you don't make it you don't want to be forgotten. You want to remembered as though you might reappear at any time. It's a comforting thought for me anyway. It's probably the reason I have such an affinity for my ancestors, trying to keep them alive. Strange seeing as how I never knew the majority of them, not even Grandparents. I knew my Great Grandfather and one Grandmother, that's about it. But I have gotten to know them over the years through pictures, stories and Ancestry.com! I have created a life for them in my mind. It makes no difference if those lives are anywhere near the reality, it's what I think. The importance lies in the remembering.
 Then there is the question of possessions. What concerns me the most are my personal possessions, the stuff I have gathered over the years that holds value to me. These objects hold no monetary value, they may not hold any value at all to another. They are the objects we treasure. Knick-Knacks, Bris-a-Brac, collectibles or junk, whatever you wish to label them. I wouldn't want anything to happen to them, even after I'm not here to take care of them. For that reason I feel a need to assign a value to them, almost like a price tag. This is what this means to me. It's an idea I struggle with. Another idea came to me yesterday as I wrote a post about my Troll. Perhaps I should just create a catalogue of my treasures. I'm thinking I could write a brief story or explanation about my treasures, include a photograph, and bind them together. In that way, someone could check the catalogue before discarding the object. It's a project that would occupy me for a while, maybe over a long cold winter. I'm thinking about those mysterious things we hold dear. I have a stone, it's just a plain old stone, why would I keep that? There is a reason. There is a gyroscope, an old, slightly damaged gyroscope, that I treasure. Why? Because it was a gift from my sister less than a year before her passing. There's a whole story behind that. A book, certain pictures, and other objects that apparently have no value, invaluable. My father decorations from WW2. So many little things to catalogue and explain, give a description, like a catalogue enticing you to buy.
 To be honest I guess that is what I want, for someone, anyone, to buy my stuff. Yes, preferably it would be family but barring that, any caretaker will do. I don't want my stuff discarded. To do so would be like discarding me, even though I won't know it, or will I? It's the unknown that concerns us all. I wonder what will happen to my stuff, more than I worry about what will happen to me. Could be that's because I feel like I can control that to some degree. I have no say about what happens after I die, or do I? Is that what ghosts are all about, refusing to go? Well I don't know anything about that but I know my stuff will be staying behind, you can't take it with you. I guess the deal is this, I want my treasures to be treasured. Hmm, seems right.   

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