We gather so much stuff in our lives – us, people, Ben and I. Ben was a gatherer extraordinaire. He loved to acquire, collect and treasure things.

But when we’re gone, our stuff remains….Ben’s things became my things. To Ben each object had its value and its story. They even all had an intended future – some to be treasured forever, some to serve their purpose then be thrown away, and some perhaps already earmarked for Ebay or the charity shop. Since Ben died all of these things have become loaded with new value – even the most banal of objects seems too precious to just throw away.

Saying farewell to any of these fragments of Ben’s life is like saying goodbye to him. It can feel like betrayal – as though I want to erase these imprints of his presence here.

But it’s also freeing sometimes. The ‘stuff’ has often weighed me down. Say, for example, the drawer of socks – they couldn’t stay, life goes on and Saskia and I could make good use of that drawer, and yet it took a while to clear it out and take them down to the Pilgrims Hospice shop. Or the several boxes of hoarded miscellany – old bookmarks, silly pens, key rings. None of it useful or meaningful to me, left to gather dust in the dark by Ben, and yet obviously all with its history – gifts from family and friends, stuff he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of. What to do with all that?

These dilemmas still go on, as I have ‘sorting’ moods here and there, in this room or in that. But I’ve become more relaxed over these two and a bit years about it all. I’ve learned that it’s ok not to know what to do with something – if I can’t figure out what to do with it, it’s ok to just leave it where it is, or put it in the loft for a while, because sooner or later the right ‘new home’ will come to me. I’ve had enough of these sudden dawnings now to believe that I needn’t see Ben’s things around the house as something to get stressed or guilty about. Instead, whatever they are, I try to give them new lives, one way or another, so that they’re not ‘dead’ objects anymore, but ones with life and purpose, owned by someone who can re-use and re-treasure them.

I want to share the different ways that I’ve done this but will do so in my next post. I hope it might be of use to anyone starting out on a grieving journey and is overwhelmed, as I have been, with all of the stuff, the fragments left behind.