“He is the head of the
body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he
might come to have first place in everything.”
Colossians 1:18
I went to see a friend recently who
has come to a certain age, and is in the process of moving from her grand old
house into a retirement community. She’s
made the decision with proper deliberation, and she knows it’s the right
choice. A smaller space means freedom
for her, the ability to age with more dignity and grace. But it’s a challenging and sometimes
sorrowful task to sort through all these things that fill her old house, and to
make those inevitable decisions about what can be taken and what must be left
to others.
She wanted me to see the house in
all its glory, before the packers descended, stirring up the dust and setting
things ajar. She led me from room to
room, and told me the stories behind the furniture and the pictures on the wall. This piece was her grandmother’s and that one
she spotted at a sale in the rain and bought it for a song. The friend who painted that picture has been
gone for years, but this artist went on to become a smashing success. The things we gather together over a lifetime
do clutter our houses and accumulate ever so much dust. But they are the tangible signs of our
memories. They express our
relationships.
My friend seemed most excited about
the things in the house she was preparing to send on to others. A
local museum in her grandfather’s home town had agreed to take a few items that
couldn’t really fit in anyone’s drawing room.
Her son had said he would like to have a cherished collection. She was surprised by that. He’d never shown so much interest when she’d
tried to explain all the parts to him before.
But she smiled when she thought about how he had already decided where
it would fit in his own home. She would
make him notes about where each piece had come from, why it was
significant. He would never be able to
remember all of it, she guessed. But it
reminded him of her, of course. He knew
how much she loved the collection, and that matters.
