a little longer

  It's something I think about often, who will be the custodian of my memories. I've written plenty of those down in the hopes they remain. Then there are the physical things I've collected over the years. Some of those things are the memories of others, parents, uncles, and siblings. For instance, I have a cigarette lighter given to my uncle as a Christmas gift by my aunt. It's engraved and dated 1949. What memory is locked inside. Recently I came into possession of 35MM slides that belonged to my wife's uncle George. Never married and with no children there was no one to take custody. I have scanned them, and my wife identified the people as best as she could. Many remain a mystery and there is no one further to ask. I feel a responsibility to his memories. And that is true of many of the objects I have around. For many I feel like I am the last connection to the person that owned them. It's a complicated story but my children never had a connection with my parents. My children didn't grow up in my hometown, being military brats. All they know are stories and old pictures.

 Yesterday as I poked around in the attic I ran across a number of those type of things. They are in the attic because I don't display them, just save them. It's the old story of one man's junk. I did begin to look at some of that stuff and feel like it was time to let it go. That was especially in the area of tools. I have quite a number of them that I feel I'll never use again those days being behind me. I don't have a sentimental attachment to them, that's what I tell myself, but still, I might need that one day. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Some other things I have saved thinking they would increase in value, and they have not. My lighted Joe camel advertising sign being one of them. Perhaps it is time to let it go to someone that will display it in their man cave or whatever. Lots of books and magazines up there as well. Just hard to part with old friends like that. 

 I have given it some thought, and I think I know what bothers me about all of that. By sorting through that stuff, deciding and relegating its' fate, I am curating a collection, seems like that is something you do with dead peoples' stuff. It speaks to me of a museum and I'm not that old. I guess that is why people becomes hoarders just keeping it all. The collectors you see on television, like the ones visited by Antique Archeology, are really just high-class hoarders. I could have been one of them given the money to collect and store all that stuff. 

 Maybe it is time for me to curate my stuff, find a home for it other than my attic. I wonder what to do with those things like Uncle Georges' slides. There is no one left that would know who those folks are, no one that would have any particular interest. But I'm thinking there must be some museum or something somewhere that would be happy to get those, and more importantly preserve them. Its' been said a picture is worth a thousand words, but those slides have lost their voice. All that remains would be in the imagination of the viewer. Looking with an objective eye is far different than knowing the story. 

 Now a curate is the person charged with the care of souls in a parish. They are like an apprentice to the Vicar. In a sense the things we leave behind are a portion of our soul. They are certainly clues to who we were or who we wished to be. Can you curate yourself? That is the challenge we all face whether we are aware of it or not. Do we really get to choose what we leave behind? I'm thinking that we don't, not really. It is what others remember that remains. The best we can do is leave reminders. And that is what we curate. I'm thinking I'll leave lots of reminders just to be sure. Yeah, that sounds right. That stuff in the attic; can stay a while longer.