The plastic tubs and cardboard boxes were spread across the carpet of my basement floor, a stack of books and magazines starting to form here, a cardboard box becoming a depository for old photos over there. Within reach was a garbage bag, slowly filling.
This was spring cleaning, but not for the sake of an annual ritual. It was a long bout of procrastination being brought to a head by an upcoming home renovation – the painting of my entire basement.
That, too, had been put off for the nearly four years I’ve lived in my current house. But now it was scheduled to begin in days, and the long-stated desire to “clean out the basement” could be put off no longer.
What I realized as I sifted through boxes is that my years of putting off the project was less about physical work than it was about something emotional: Confronting the past – the good, the bad, the painful and the joyful. I wasn’t just forced to relive and reframe it in the present, but to make hundreds of decisions, one item and memory at a time, about what to keep and what to let go.
That includes items of sentiment, like a school art project made by one of my children or photos from my first marriage; things I might like to think would form my “legacy” someday, such as an award plaque or some of my creative writing; and items that were passed down from my parents that had been passed down from theirs yet had no day-to-day purpose in my life.
I meticulously sorted items that were from my deceased father’s life – fading family photos, items from his career as a bar owner, even a shoe-shine kit that reminded me vividly of him polishing his boots before a night out – and what I decided to keep went into one medium-sized plastic bin.
The process took me back to the days after his death in 2018, when my sister, brother and I were cleaning out Dad’s one-bedroom apartment in Mackinaw City. What struck us was that even in that limited space, he had accumulated and kept enough for us to fill a double-wide dumpster outside his unit.
And now, just six years later in my basement that physical legacy had been reduced again to one plastic bin, on a suddenly roomier shelf in my basement. And of course, the next logical and emotional leap was a short one: These bins of mine, in the basement and garage and home office, may be gossamer tethers to the past for me but will be weights to lift for my children in the future.
Adding to my reflections on all of this is the recognition that we’re in the season of reflection and renewal. Easter, Passover and Ramadan are about looking inward and taking stock of our lives, ourselves and our relationship with a higher power, whatever we understand it to be.
Each year, we are encouraged to consider our own rebirth, and it grew more obvious as I cleaned that the physical improvements to my living space need to be matched by an emotional commitment to let go and make my legacy here, in the present.
In the past year I took road trips to California and back with my daughter, and I have gone West to ski with my son and taken my 86-year-old Mom to her first Lions game at Ford Field. In all these instances I brought back nothing but the memories that were made together.
That approach was driven home when, sifting through some papers, I found an envelope addressed to me from my father. It was postmarked less than four months before he died. When I opened it, I instantly recalled he’d tucked a crisp $100 bill inside along with some handwritten advice:
“John: Life is short – go have some fun. Love, Dad”
That one is a keeper. I hope my kids heed it and pass it on to the next generation.
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