The Memory Box

It’s hard to decide what kinds of things should go in a memory box. I have one for Dear Son and one for myself. The objective of a memory box is so you’ll keep just your favorite things and not keep lots of stuff to make your home cluttered. I am highly organized so that’s not really an issue, but I do try to edit fairly well.

Typically, you have just one memory box to store all of those important momentos. When the box gets full, you edit, making choices on what objects to keep or rather, what objects are more important to you than others. Over time, you’ll look back and then you will have all of the keepsakes from the highlights of your life. And therein lies the dilemma.

For most people, you simply keep a finite amount of things. You don’t worry so much about tossing out too much, since there are always new events or things coming into your life. Life marches on and so do the memories.

But what about when life is, well, more finite. I have some things for Dear Son that I don’t want to part with. The question is, how much is too much? What if I get rid of some things and then he passes? Will I regret having eliminated some stuff?

I saved his AFOs. AFOs are leg braces that he wore as a toddler. He started wearing them when he was three and got a new pair every year. He never wore shoes much before then. He didn’t walk and well, his feet were kind of balled up and lacking tone so putting on shoes was an exercise in futility for the most part. Shoes were just for looks. But the AFOs were important. Some mothers save their baby’s first shoes but I saved his AFOs. I used to save all of them up to the present. That means one new pair every year. It was cool to see how much he has grown. The plastic braces fit around his foot and halfway up his leg, so it gave you a good impression of his little legs. What mother wouldn’t love that? But did I need to save them all? No, of course not. I got rid of quite a few some time ago and saved the others.

But what do I save? Or rather, what should I get rid of? I have a small maple rocker that he loved for many years. Ten years of rocking in that chair. I love it and I can still see his happy face sitting in the rocker or his face leaning up against the window as he would look out.

Or what about his Red Flyer Wagon? That was cute too. I thought about making it into a storage chest of sorts. Adding new legs to it and then adding a maple top to it. In the center of the top, adding picture frame molding and putting a picture of him in his red wagon on top. What a wonderful reminder of Dear Son as a little boy. I thought I could store all of his scrapbooks in there; the ones I’ll make when he’s gone, when I have lots of free time on my hands.

And then there are all of the school projects. I don’t keep any of the ones he didn’t make himself, well, not really anyway. If I were to be truthful, he didn’t make any of them himself, but there are some of them that they made with his hands, so a turkey for Thanksgiving might have a picture of Dear Son’s hand dipped in paint. Those are keepers for sure.

But what about all of the Barney’s? I have a half of a dozen Barney’s that he loved so much. All of them, dog eared and loved a lot by Dear Son. How do I throw those away?

And what should I do with all of these things? If I throw them away and he dies, I have nothing. If I keep a few of them, will I wish I had saved more? I have fewer things to save, since he can’t do as much. So that makes what he does have and what he used to do, all that much more important. What do you do when they don’t make memories anymore? You look in the memory box. You open it up and remember the good times. I am certain when the time comes, I am going to need all of these things. And I bet I’ll be glad that I kept them.