8/22/2004

Sunday Sermon

“When in Doubt, Throw Out”

When I was eight years old, my mother used to come into my room, claim it was a mess, and make me clean it up. She was most annoyed at my collection of popsicle wrappers I kept in a trunk. She said it would attract ants. If you collected enough Popsicle wrappers, you could trade them in for baseball cards.

We flipped for baseball cards at school, collected them, traded them,and it was more important than real money at the time, except you could buy more baseball cards with money.

My mother was merciless when she cleaned out my room. We had a three story house in Port Chester, New York, a maid and a chauffeur, who did not live with us, and my brother and my room were on the top floor, most likely the servants quarters, as we had our own bathroom and another room, that I turned into a “chemistry lab.” I relate this because my mother rarely came up to our rooms, only to clean mine out.

Her most favorite thing she said, over and over again, driving me nuts, even to this day: “When in doubt, throw out.” And she certainly did, all my prized possessions.

Throughout all my life, I have kept whatever I thought was important, moving it in boxes from apartment to apartment, house to house, storage area to storage area, here and there, some in boxes I have not opened since junior high school, including all my Downbeat magazines, New Yorker magazines, Rose magazines, college test scores, papers, trains, Civil war miniature soldier collection, you name it. I have been the executor to three estates, including one where all the relatives lived in Europe (mostly Belgium,) disposing of all property and personal effects. My mother died first, but organized everything of who was to get what, even had pictures in boxes with the names of who got what. When I moved my father suffering from Alzheimer to a nursing home as it was a “health reason” and not for comfort, Sue and I cleaned out that house, giving away all the clothes, following the will, donating thousands of books to the Salvation Army ( my brothers and I keep first editions and a few favorites.) My father was a radio-television writer, producer, director, so we also donated a lot to a college who specialized in this collection. The rest was a lot of junk.

Recently we moved Sue's parents into an “assisted living” facility in Dana Point, California, near where her brother lives in Laguna Beach., California. They had a “summer home” in Carmel Valley at the Carmel Valley Ranch, with a beautiful view, and most of their belongings. He was an avid golfer, president of the Bob Hope Classic, El Dorado County Club, had trophies, pictures in albums, on the wall, framed on desks, tables, everywhere, and all the accolades of their life.

It took Sue and her brother and sister-in-law and I three days to sort through things, then three weekends Sue and I re-gathered, packed what we could that we though they would want, although we all laughed we would be seeing these things again, as her parents think the “assisted living” is only temporarily until the father gets well. And we also gave and threw out a lot, too.

It was a lot of work, not a “vacation,” and we worked as soon as we got up until late, with wine and take-out food at 8 or 9pm. During this time, we used my mother's saying a lot: “When in doubt, throw out.”

Somehow my mother's expression finally sunk into my realization that a lot of what I think is important, that I have around me, is something to save. It is how I built up a wine collection that I know I will never live long enough to drink, and should start drinking more of it, than collecting and saving; that magazines I think I will read or will want to read when I have the time, throw in the dumpster, and the souvenirs and, like football game programs, why am I saving them? And all these that I am accumulating, will one day my kids go through them just as we did for Sue's parents, and realize no mementoes, no one wants them, no one has room for them, they were only valuable to Sue's parents.

I know my attitude has changed. Maybe if my mother hadn't have come up to my room and “forced” me to throw things out, I would have realized this sooner: I am collecting too much junk.