Postmortemistically

In her book, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”, Roz Chast explores many aspects of aging parents including dealing with their stuff. She writes, “It’s no accident that most ads are pitched to people in their 20’s and 30’s…they are less likely to have gone through the transformative process of cleaning out their deceased parent’s stuff. Once you go through that, you can never look at YOUR stuff in the same way. You start to look at your stuff a little postmortemistically.” And it’s true, lately when I look at my collection of mermaids instead of counting and categorizing them by color of tail, item they are holding, covered breasts or not, etc. I categorize them by labeled box: “Mermaid – Ornaments”, “Mermaid – Figurines”, “Mermaid – Framed Pictures”, “Mermaid – Bath Toys”,”Mermaid – Pottery” on down to “Mermaid – misc.” I am hopeful, I guess, that they will not be consigned to unlabeled trash bins so I haven’t stopped collecting them yet!

Roz Chast