I went home to see my mother today to meet with a realtor and sort through some things.

The meeting went well and we have some things in motion now that we’ve needed to do for years. I’m positive that things are starting to move forward, but it’s still a very big hill to climb…

As I was doing some laundry, I looked up on the shelves at the Tom Clark gnomes that she used to collect.  I remember how much she and my dad loved to collect them.  They probably have over 100 of them and now, they just sit and collect dust.

What becomes of the things that are most important to us, the things that we love and collect over the course of our lives?  I once attended an estate auction where there were probably over 500 of these gnomes.  The woman who had collected them had died, and now her whole life of collecting was being sold in lots for dirt cheap.  Something she probably paid $100 for was now sold in a box of 5 items for $10.

I’m learning the hard way that things are just that: things. All of the trinkets that are important to us, all of the little things we collect, are meaningful only if we give them meaning.  Otherwise, they are just materials molded into something and sold.  My mother and her two sisters who live with her have thousands of trinkets.  My brothers and I are trying to sort through them to see what is important and what we can sell.  It’s no easy task.

Things are just things, yes.  It’s the memories that are important. The love, the time shared together, the warmth of family and home: these are the things that matter and will carry on.