The time has finally come. Try as I may, I can’t put it off any longer.

I have to sort through the remains of the apartment where my parents spent the last 30 years of their lives. 

Oh, a good bit of what was once there no longer is. Some of the furniture has found new homes with various family members, and a wonderful person who helped care for my parents went through many of the drawers and closets and organized what was there. But now I’m finding that as much as she went through, there is so . . . much . . . more . . . 

Tonight, I began sorting through bags and boxes of paper. All kinds of paper. There were Medicare notices, EOBs from BlueCross, a plethora of empty envelopes, and employment records for the caregivers . . . a copy of my step-grandmother’s will (she died in 2007), a million Wal-Mart receipts, and bank statements. So. Many. Bank. Statements. Not because they used so many banks. They just never threw anything away. So now we have DECADES of bank statements. And my children wonder where my hoarder habits originated.

But the hardest part? The hardest part has been the cards. Christmas cards. Birthday cards. Anniversary cards. Thank you cards. Get well cards. Thinking of you cards. Bags and bags and boxes and boxes because, again, they just never threw anything away. And I feel a need to open every single one. Who sent it? Was there a personal note included? What about a picture we might want to keep?

Most of these went into a box—the I-hope-to-find-someone-who-can-use-these box. I remember making baskets as a teenager out of greeting cards, cut to a certain shape with holes punched around the edges then sewn together with yarn. Can you tell there wasn’t a lot to do when I was growing up? I think we made them at church, filled them with fruit (maybe?) and delivered them to folks around town. Does anybody still do that? Are there other uses for used every-kind-of-card-in-the-world cards? I’m saving them just in case, knowing I can toss them later, but I can’t dig them out of the garbage once the trucks run on Monday.

Most of these have been difficult to look at, mainly because they remind me of a time that I didn’t appreciate and now wish I could revisit. There’s an abundance of Christmas cards featuring family pictures, some of whom are no longer together . . . some of whom are no longer here. There was one in particular that I simply could not bring myself to discard. It was the entire family—some of my favorite people on the planet—posing together on the beach for this very purpose. And now one of them has departed this life for the next. I wanted that picture . . . needed that picture to remind me of her sweet smile . . . of her goodness and her graciousness and her kindness. 

There was a Christmas card from Faye and Delbert, members of my mother’s family on her father’s side. I was a flower girl in their wedding, and I’ve got pictures to prove it that hopefully no one will ever see. I found a note from my cousin, sent when her mother—my mother’s half-sister—died. My mother was physically unable to attend the funeral, and Ann had sent a memorial folder and a note telling her how well the service had gone. There was a page meant to be placed in her graduating class reunion scrapbook—a picture of everyone in attendance. Everyone but me. I was my mother’s chauffeur when my dad could no longer attend. They even invited me to the reunion after she died, but I couldn’t bring myself to go. Her scrapbook is upstairs in a room I haven’t tackled yet. When I find it, I’ll insert that page and then wonder what I’m supposed to do with the book.

Perhaps the oddest thing of all was a small, inconspicuous envelope, yellowed with age, sealed and safely tucked into the stationary box that once held others of its kind and, I’m assuming, matching notecards. It was puffy . . . the sides would give when I pressed them together. So very carefully, I slipped by fingers beneath the flap of the envelope and gently pried it open. Inside I found . . . how shall I say it? A clump? A wad? A clump, I think. A clump of gray hair. Was it her mother’s? Was it clipped from what little hair her father had at his untimely death? Was his hair even gray when he died? Maybe it was actually my dad who saved it, which opens up a whole ‘nuther realm of possibilities. I don’t know. I’ll never know. There was nothing written on the envelope, no note enclosed in the box. My mother may have known. My father might have. But I never will. How do you discard something . . . throw it in the trash . . . when it obviously holds great meaning? Just a meaning I don’t understand.

I’m sure as the days turn into weeks and months, I’ll find other equally puzzling things. And I’ll find other equally meaningful items that I know we’ll want to keep—and a lot of things we won’t. But through it all, there is one thing of which I am certain. Everything I will touch meant something to my mother and my dad. They held them and they appreciated them . . . and I’m grateful to be able to do the same. I’m grateful for the memories held in the things that I will hold. 

About the author:  Lisa Shackelford Thomas is a fourth generation member of a family that’s been in funeral service since 1926.  She has been employed at Shackelford Funeral Directors in Savannah, Tennessee for over 40 years and currently serves as the manager there.  Any opinions expressed here are hers and hers alone, and may or may not reflect the opinions of other Shackelford family members or staff.