On the Nature of Possessions and Aging

By Charles LaFond, Senior Director, Development and Donor Communications

When you look around your home, what do you see?  Maybe close your eyes and let your mind wander around your living room, bedroom, and kitchen.  Or wander using your body and your eyes. What do you see?

If you are like me, you see things you own.  It is the stage-set of our life. That teapot from Granny, that painting Mom left me, that pen Dad left me, that book I bought on vacation but never read…I will…one day; these are the things, the possessions, we rent from life while we live.

I find it valuable to close my eyes sometimes and think joyfully of the things I have inherited and purchased, even the things I gave away to enter the monastery, and then more things I gave away when I had to downsize over these past 30 years. I loved them all. But they needed to go – to leave my life the way regrets and resentments need to leave my life.  They weigh me down like dragging an anchor when trying to catch the wind and sail or even fly.

Soon, at 62, I will need to manage another round of purging.  It’s not that I don’t like these things.  They are so lovely, and each one holds a story – a story of my life and those who went before me. There are hundreds of pots that I have made – they will last 2,000 years, but I will not. Nor will my house.

There are “family pieces” of porcelain, oil paintings, and mahogany, along with the books in “secretary desks” that have been on those very shelves and behind those very glass-and-wood-mullioned cases for three generations. These things will be loaded onto a truck and driven all the way to Virginia for my nieces and nephews and for my grand-nieces and grand-nephews.  I want to downsize for the fourth time in my life – to lighten my load – to move into a 600-square-foot cabin in the woods for this final phase of my life, be it long or short.

The Irish call one’s last phase of life “the final completion.” I like the term, especially in a society so unwilling to discuss aging.  I wish I were Dutch – they are okay talking about aging.  Also, the Finnish people, but they have Vodka, which makes the conversation easier.

I have told my family to expect a truck full of “family stuff” in the next year or so and have begun designing my one-room forest cabin for my final years, whether they be long or short. I hate road trips, but I love diners, so it will be okay as long as I get to eat lots of pancakes and burgers at America’s diners along the six days of driving through cornfields.

As hard as it is to imagine letting go of rooms and things, old photo albums and books, I don’t want some poor sod to have to clean it all out when I begin pushing up daisies. What a selfish thing that would be – to white-knuckle my possessions and then make my family or friends spend days and days sorting it all and making endless trips to Senior Thrift. Better I make those trips myself.

I plan to keep about 25% of what I “own” (if a sack of meat, calcium, and water that will one day die can “own” anything!) But this is the contract I have made with my future self about possessions:

“One day, I will die. I accept that. And when I do die, those who clean out my home and scatter my ashes should be able to pack up my possessions in one hour, make it to Senior Thrift in 30 minutes, and spend the rest of the day in whiskey and song, laughing and weeping and telling stories about my life at a local pub.”

As it is written, so it shall be done.