When my Oma died, I acquired her off-white writing cabinet.
It's a bit ugly, the knobs are a bit stripped, and the drawers are a bit wonky.
But Oma used to use it.
In fact, I can still envision her sitting at its open mouth, writing letters, paying her bills, and watching the news out of the corner of her eye.
After Oma died, a gaggle of us gathered at her house and sorted through her things.
Decades of accumulation. A record of mental decline. Secrets and family history.
Anyone who has gone through this process knows that "emotional" doesn't even begin to describe the experience.
An inevitable byproduct of this sorting process was a divvying up of Oma's belongings.
We each had our things: the items that held memories and little pieces of our hearts. Our souls.
The items that held our wish for life to remain as it was.
Unchanged.
It's how I came to own this cabinet and the dusty bouquet of silk flowers sitting in the dining room;
her paintings adorn our apartment's walls.
Looking at these items now, I recall the intensity of feelings I had when we were all together.
Sorting. Remembering. Claiming.
The intensity of feeling competitive and jealous and vulnerable. Of feeling loss and grief and fear.
To lay claim to take something having belonged to her meant having to put into words the value it maintained...for me.
Could my words be adequate enough to convey its value?
Could my words be eloquent enough to trump the value maintained by another?
What currency are words? Feelings? Memories?
A while back some friends and I joked that we should write a manual for how to navigate the process of sorting and divvying belongings after a loved one's death. We talked about how awesome it would be if we could develop a rubric for determining the economic value of sentiment and market it
as a tool for use in these complex family situations.
We laughed about it over the remnants of brunch but I think about it often when I look at the cabinet.
Whose value to me is:
Priceless.
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