Letting Go of the Dirt

 

We receive most of our parents’ teachings in the first few years of our lives, mostly from watching what they do. We adopt and reject their customs, behaviors and beliefs based on what we think they got right or wrong.

There is one lesson I learned from my parents towards the end of their lives. They showed me how to let go of stuff. The pieces of this world that we gather along the way. The dirt in our little part of the garden. The things we cherish.

Mom hung on tightly to life through a long terminal illness. But once her doctor measured her life in weeks, she began to go through the rituals of letting go. She asked me to push her wheelchair to visit each room in the house. Her eyes scrolled over each piece of furniture, pictures, floral arrangements as if to capture a screenshot for a moment and then delete it. Cherishing her stuff one last time and then releasing her grip on them. She said nothing except noting when she was ready to move to the next room.

Dad’s method was different. He started the process years before his death. We watched him get rid of the majority of his possessions when he remarried after mom died. He was moving on and his choices of what to keep were more practical than sentimental. We helped him make several more moves after the death of his second wife, from apartments to independent living to assisted living to memory care bedrooms. With each move he wanted fewer and fewer things to go with him. When he died, except for a few family photos, all his belongings fit into a few donation boxes. He had already given us everything else that had meaning.

The two methods of letting go were vastly different, but both acknowledged the temporal nature of this life and the things in it. Mom’s method carried the tenderness to honor her past. Dad’s method carried the courage to walk into his future each time the present ground underneath him shifted. Both were clear that none of it was theirs in the first place and that none of it had any eternal worth.

Mom’s method held the gratitude of Psalm 16:5 “LORD, you are my portion and my cup of blessing; you hold my future.” Dad’s gradual disrobing of stuff embodied Job 1:21 “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will leave this life. The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Both involved letting the dirt of this earth slip through their hands. One held the rich soil in her palms and let it slowly sift through her fingers back onto the earth’s surface. The other scooped the dirt by the handfuls and pitched it over his shoulder. Neither ever looked back at it.

We all have our stuff with different levels of attachment to it. How do you feel about yours? What will be your way of sifting through life’s accumulation? How do you want to let go of the dirt?