Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about stuff. I have a lot of it, I want less of it. I have an urge to simplify my life after losing J to suicide.
In films when someone dies, their room is left untouched with the door kept closed. Like a shrine, there is an aversion to moving or changing or getting rid of anything – to illustrate that the pain is too great? Or maybe it implies that by eradicating their belongings, the memory of the person who has died will also fade.
After J died, his dad asked for all his belongings to be returned to him, without checking if I wanted to keep anything for myself or for the boys. If I sound bitter, it is because I am a little. On the other hand, if I step back from my initial, emotionally-loaded reaction, I don’t place a huge amount of sentimentality on physical things, neither did J.
So maybe it was OK after all, maybe it worked for our two very different approaches to grieving: J’s dad ending up with the bedroom-shrine while I cleared space for a different future.
Me and the boys each chose a t-shirt to keep and we also didn’t return J’s battered bluetooth speaker. He had travelled around the world with it and in our house he took it into whichever room he was in, or into the garden while he weeded and planted, all the while listening to an obscure online French radio station. It is probably the single item we all associate with him the most and it felt apt that we could continue to use it in his honour (though I doubt he would approve of some of the boys’ music choices).
My dad is a hoarder. He was a young child during the German occupation of Greece and has told me stories of cutting chocolate into tiny pieces and only being allowed to eat one piece a week, or slicing into a bar of soap hoping it was cheese. When I was growing up there were tins of food on the top shelves in his clothes cupboards: rows and rows of pulses, tomatoes, and tinned versions of ready meals.
Only once I moved out and experienced living in lots of different households, did I realise that for most people tinned goods were kept exclusively in the confines of the kitchen. My dad is now six months away from his ninetieth birthday. He is living on his own in Athens, in our large family home that is gradually falling apart around him. I have given up trying to persuade him to sell up and downsize. He says it’s the wrong time to sell (it has been the wrong time to sell for the last twenty-plus years), he says there is nowhere for him to rent nearby, he says that in Greece you can’t hire skips to clear stuff out of the house and get it ready to sell. When we were in Athens over Easter we would play ‘Count the Skips’ on our evening strolls around the neighbourhood.
The truth is twofold: he doesn’t want to move. He is a creature of habit who does not like change. Secondly, he has far too much stuff. The thought of clearing and sorting it all out is overwhelming for him, he just doesn’t want to do it. Before I get judged for being too hard on him, yes he is eighty-nine. But my mum had been trying to persuade him to clear his stuff and sell the house long before his age gave him the perfect excuse not to.
I witness first-hand the anxiety that the up-keep and maintenance of a too-big house cause my dad. I don’t want that. At the same time, J’s death followed by my mum’s shortly afterwards, have shoved mortality right up in front of my face (would the youth of today say “up in my grill?”) All this stuff around me, what even is the point of it? I use barely a fraction of it. What am I hoping to do with it? Do I really need it?
I think the universe is sending me signals, telling me that I should shed, scale back, simplify. I’m reading a book called The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozeki. It’s quite an unusual book, but I’m enjoying it. At the weekend, I stumbled across the lines: “What makes a person want so much? What gives things the power to enchant, and is there a limit to the desire for more?” One of the characters has lost her husband and can’t stop buying things.
Yesterday, while I listened to a podcast on my dog walk, the guest quoted a Buddhist concept. “You are born with nothing and you die with nothing.” I’ve heard it before, but never has it resonated so much – what I am keeping all this stuff for?
On Insight Timer, a brilliant meditation app I use daily, I was drawn to a course called Move from clutter to clarity in ten days. It sounds a bit naff but is actually one of the best courses I’ve done. And the audiobook I’m listening to on my way into work? “Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish,” by Patrick Grant. Reading back on this list, perhaps it’s less the universe speaking to me and more me seeking these things out. Even so, something is pushing me to change now, three years after losing J. I’m ready.
It’s not easy and I’m not there yet. I’ve inherited my dad’s tendency to look at something useless sand think: “Maybe I’ll need this one day….” But I have a long-term plan.In just over five years, Nathan will be eighteen and I will be fifty-eight. This is when I’m going to downsize and move to a bungalow in Devon. I’m going to learn from what my dad is doing and do the opposite. Find a little house near a little village, where I can walk to the shops and talk to someone while I buy a few bits and pieces. I’m going to live simply, with few things and no clutter.
A lot might happen in five years. Equally, my priorities right now lie with the kids (as it should be). My own life feels like it’s on hold, suspended in amber. Five years may flash by in the blink of an eye, with no significant events to mark their passing. In which case, I’d better get a move on.
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