Trying to make sense of someone else’ life is impossible, but it’s human nature to wonder “why” from time to time.
Anticipating some time in the future, when your kids (and maybe grandkids) are going through the stuff you leave behind when you die … seeing them ask, “Why did she hold on to this?” … it’s possible to imagine that question being asked in a derisive, disrespectful tone, as if to say, “What possible use could this be?”. Underneath is the fear that they’ll think, “man, that was dumb”.
It’s also easy to imagine the question being asked out of simple curiosity. “I wonder what she planned to do with this.”. Implicit in this form of the question is “She was always so creative; she could do anything with anything.”.
It’s true, too. Mom has always been really creative, her mind works in mysterious ways to the rest of us .. just as my brothers would say that MY mind works in mysterious ways, if at all.
Ultimately, there will be some things left over when we die, that nobody else can imagine a use for. That doesn’t mean anything at all. In fact, those twist-ties that Grandma Bork held on to? I have a box full of them, too. Hey, they’re useful for all sorts of stuff, and if you remember that you have them, imagine the good fortune when someone says, “I wish I had some way to tie this electrical cord together”.
I have a box of shoe laces, too, from old combat boots and hiking boots, ironically tied together with twist-ties. I’ve got a bunch of computer cables from machines I had fifteen years ago — outdated, they won’t attach to anything modern, but I hold on to them anyways, unable to give them up, because someday, somewhere, someone will ask if I have one of those old parallel printer cables. At least, that’s what I imagine when wondering, “why do I keep this junk?”.
“Junk drawer” is a common term. We keep miscellaneous stuff in our junk drawers (you should see the one I have at work); most of us have several containers of “junk”. We refer to it that way, as junk, even though we think highly enough of this junk to keep it … even if we forget we had it, sometime long into the future we will find it and be amazed at the treasure trove of junk. Junk is a memory prompter, when we had hoped our memory would be prompted to remind us that we had this junk, when a use comes up for it.
Mom and Dad seem to think they’re “hoarders”. Not so:
Now THAT’s hoarding.
Food for thought (I sure could eat some chocolate cake right about now): each of us has a lot of “stuff”. Practically the only folks who are free from a lot of stuff are the homeless … and they’re prisoners of the stuff they used to have, or the stuff they’d like to have.
When, at the end of time, I am looking through my mom’s stuff, I will remember not that she was weird for keeping this or that, but that she loved me, and probably some of this stuff that she saved, she saved for me.
Thanks, Mom. I’ll remember you by the “junk” you keep 
