Value vs Worth
It’s been just over a year since my mum died. Recently, with the sale of her home about to reach settlement, and the headstone on the grave she shares with her husband of 55 years, reworded to the satisfaction of my children and I, I decided it was time to reopen the boxes Tess and I had so carefully packed and labelled early last summer.
So much of what Edna had owned – and there was a lot of
‘stuff’ – had already been distributed to local op shops, a huge January garage
sale, failing to move many of her possessions and clothes on to new and loving
homes. In this era of ‘downsizing’ and ‘decluttering’ it should not have come
as a surprise that people just didn’t want more ‘stuff’. Financial times are
such that many people no longer have the disposable income to spend at garage
sales, no matter how low the prices are, and they know if they wait long enough, they will eventually be able to acquire them, or something
similar, free on local ‘free stuff’ Facebook groups or on kerbsides around
their town.
It is hard to put a price on such belongings. What are they worth? We found pricing them
for the garage sale was a difficult task. Things that mum valued, do not hold
the same value for others. Many possessions are worth nothing, except to their
owner. But we had boxed up the things that we thought my family and I might
want and set them aside in my garage. Now I felt ready to revisit them. So I
began opening boxes and checking through the lists of items that each of my
children had indicated they would like. I wondered at some of their selections.
My youngest daughter had described one of her choices as the ‘ugly grape vase’!
Why did she want it then, I wondered? There were two mugs, nothing special, one
with a giraffe pictured on it and the other with a zebra, but each of the girls
separately claimed one of these, as they were the mugs they would always be
given their drink of milo in whenever they visited Edna.
As I tried to make my own choices about what I would keep
and what I would give away, I realised that of course, the true value of these
belongings collected and treasured over a 98-year lifespan, was bound up in
memory. It didn’t matter if it was fine bone china, green depression glass,
Waterford crystal, or an ‘ugly’ vase. If the object evoked a fond memory – whether
it was where it had sat in our home, who had given it to her, stories of it being
passed down through generations – then the measure of its value was the
strength of the memory it evoked. There were stories; powerful, sad, funny,
happy stories attached to these items. These stories ground me, and my children,
in family, time and place.
It doesn’t matter that the grape vase might to many, appear ugly, for
Sophie it evokes a memory that creates an attachment for her. And that was what
my choices eventually came down to. The old church organ, that Edna had played in
the little country church was not a piece of furniture I thought I wanted to
keep, but in the end, it was so bound up with my memories of her that I had to
find a place for it in my lounge room. Picking up a piece of a yellow daffodil-patterned
tea set, I could immediately hear Edna telling me the story of how my dad Jack,
had gone out one day when they were newlyweds, seen it in a shop, and knowing
she would love it, he had bought it for her on a whim. I knew I had to keep
that precious tea set because it had meant so much to her.
I culled some of my own trinkets, to make room for these
things of my mother’s. Things like the daffodil tea set had to stay, but
something else, with less intrinsic value for me had to go to make room for it.
I didn’t keep a lot in the end, but the things that I have are the things with
the strongest memories for me, the things that have stories attached to them. And
I hope as my children look at their selections, wherever they choose to display
them, or as they use them in their daily lives, they will feel the same sense
of connection with a time and a place that was occupied by their grandmother.
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