Stuff at the End

Stuff at the End

   There's an interesting memoir by Roz Chast;  she's a cartoonist for The New Yorker and, as with many of us, is Woodstock-age which means having parents in their 80s and 90s.  In her case, her parents went from living in their same apartment, to assisted living, to a nursing home and eventually to a hospital (where her father passed at 95) and to palliative care (where her mother died at 97).  The Week rated her newest book its #1 pick for top non-fiction books of 2014, and The New Yorker featured an excerpt in one of their issues (her book is titled, "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?").

   In her book, she vacillates from good daughter to bad daughter, or as she puts it, the angelic daughter named Gallant ("has forgiven her parents for all the transgressions of her youth, which she now knows were committed out of love") butting heads with the devilish daughter named Goofus ("is still seething with resentment about crap that happened forty years ago").  Her cartoon book is a bold experiment, dealing with a dreaded subject through her drawings and words, which perhaps is the only way some of us can deal with such an issue (talking to your parents about getting too old to care for themselves, or about their dying, or about your passing or getting too old to care for yourself, which is something we really don't want to discuss or think about).

   And as fascinating as her book was in dealing with the aspect of losing mobility and mental awareness, what captivated me was her dealing with the "stuff," the years and years of accumulated papers and jar lids and clothes and things so old and covered with grime that they had passed the stage of antique and simply turned into junk.  It's something that my wife always tells me, that I'm leaving her the unwelcome task of clearing out all these rooms of junk should I pass away post haste (notice how she used the word "junk" and not the word "valuables," which is more or less how I am viewing those items).  Comfort, is my defense.  Agony is the word that author Chast would use (she took a few small things from her parents place when she moved them, but left most of the rest for what I would call the grenade squad, which I tell my wife is my preferred method of saving her the work in cleaning my room when I move on to oblivion).

   But let's face it, most of us have way more stuff than we need, something that is drilled into us as consumers (note the word "consume" in there...duh!).  It is such a problem that one group made a cartoonish film of the problem, which led to another cartoon, and another and another (their group is The Story of Stuff Project).  And slowly the films couldn't stop because, yes, we all were continuing to collect "stuff," from disposable water bottles to tiny, tiny cans of cat food (higher priced, of course).  The marketers were lazily having fun keeping one step ahead of us, Costco-style.  Sure I had wine glasses, the shelf proclaimed, but not these shiny semi-crystal ones from Bulgaria with flecks of sand from the Abysmal Sea and toe-painted art from children abandoned in mines just recently discovered.  Why, you simply have to get these.

   This is what author Chast found, that she didn't need most of the stuff her parents had collected because she already had too much stuff of her own.  And it dawned on her that her children were likely reading her book and giving her the eye, like, and what are we going to do with your stuff, mom?  So, I've begun the arduous task of discarding my things, slowly, I'll admit, for when you have "stuff," (and for those of you who are impolitely labeled "anal," you can't relate to this for you more than likely discard things immediately, jealous that minimalists are ahead of you yet proud that not even a floating speck of dust is able to land comfortably on your cabinet) the task is difficult, eased only by the continued influx of more stuff.  Already, 70% of my books and CDs are gone (although nobody can tell for to them it appears that nothing has changed, which should give you an idea of the volume of "stuff" I still have to go).  Clothes?  No problem there (the one side of me that might be a minimalist, or as my wife says, a slob).  But slowly, ever so slowly, I am approaching my "valuables," old slide projectors (you should see how well the colors have held up on my slides), two reel-to-reel players (one fix-it shop told me to hang on to those), a star collection of CED discs (you'll have to look that one up since they're so valuable, even if the people selling them on Ebay are stuck with no buyers) and tons of limited edition prints (runs limited to 5000 so they're even better than posters!).  Hmmm, good thing my wife can't draw cartoons or she would probably give Roz Chast a run for her money on the passing of a husband and his junk (there's that word again...if only I could get her to understand).

   But time marches on, as they say. And as I find myself less and less able to keep moving around those heavy boxes of my "valuables" (I really should take a look inside them one of these days), I am thinking of writing my own book, a book filled with this gradual process of discovery, this slow process of change, this miniscule process of realization.  It'll be titled, "One Person's Junk Is Another Person's...Junk."