History among the clothespins

When my Mother died, she left behind her 83 years worth of -- history -- for her kids to wade through. My brother and I are in hip boots at this time, trying to decide what to keep and what to sell and what (sorry, Mom) to throw away.

Mom was a proud member of the Generation of Savers.

She saved old obituaries. I guess part of it was her genealogy hobby, but I have to believe part of it was the possibility to look through them, not find her own, and continue living. Knowing that she could find all of this information on the Internet was not enough to let her discard them, but that knowledge has allowed us to do so. Except for hers.

Being wary of throwing something important away, Mom kept all of her old financial records. Not just from the past few years -- we have been finding receipts dating back to the 1950's. After checking with her accountant, we have been able to shred most of those. They may qualify as antiques, but she was not famous, and there are a lot of non-famous pack rats in the world.

She also had a thing for clothespins. Her filing methods included clipping together receipts and unopened mail and other things she wanted to keep and putting the collection in a special place to be dealt with at a later date. Those special places became boxes. These in turn were eventually put in a closet. They are sort of miniature time capsules.

Speaking of unopened mail -- we have been able to put together quite a little cache of pennies and nickles from those foundations who send out "guilt change" in order to elicit a donation to their organization. I guess she thought that if she didn't open it, and didn't spend those nickles or pennies, she would not have the obligation to donate. She couldn't find it in herself to throw it away unopened (it contained MONEY after all), but kept them just in case she had a few unspent dollars to give away. She never did, and we don't either, but we have found the unmitigated gall to take the money off and throw the rest away. It is MONEY, after all.

Mom was one of those thoughtful people who placed crosses decorated with flowers on grave sites. Mostly relatives, a lot of friends, and sometimes just a barren grave site that looked forgotten. All of the miscellaneous rolls of ribbon, silk flowers, florist foam, etc, etc, used to make these are in her storage building. There are also, among other items, canning jars of all shapes and sizes, pictures (we'll get to them later) and frames, newspaper clippings, things too good to throw away, but replaced by better ones, as well as two (count 'em - two) freezers full of food (Mom was a widow and lived alone).

At this point, let me say that my Mother was not by any means eccentric. Quite normal, in fact, for someone of her generation. She just never threw anything out that might be "good stuff" or that she or someone else might need someday.

She had cassette tapes of sermons preached at her last 3 or 4 churches, several tapes (intermingled with the above) of grandchildren reciting Bible verses, cassette tapes of gospel singing (my parents belonged to a gospel singing quartet), pre-recorded tapes of gospel and Christian music -- literally hundreds of tapes. We've even found 8-track tapes, and a couple of reel-to-reel. (If you don't know what those are, look under "stone-age" on the Internet.)

And of course, the pictures. Thousands, and thousands, and thousands of pictures. Who are these people -- and are we related to them? Not having the time at this point to go through them all, we have adopted the practice of putting them in a box (actually about 20 boxes) for later perusal. I believe that when my brother and I die, our children will look into the boxes, say to each other "Who are these people -- and are we related to them?", close the boxes and put them away . . . for later perusal.

History repeats itself, you know.