All that is left of my brother is his stuff. He came into this world with nothing, accumulated stuff for 23 years, and left with nothing. Now we have his stuff. Ironically, I had planned to give him a DVD of You Can't Take It With You for Hanukkah this year. No, he couldn't.
Part of me wants everything that was Adam's. Keep it all in place. Don't even clean his bedroom. His phone number is still in my cell phone. At first I asked Dad to give me everything on Adam's hard drive except for the porn. Then I changed my mind. I want the porn too. I want all of Adam. What I really want is Adam.
This is something I think the whole family is struggling with. Knowing my parents hate clutter and don't have much use for most of my brother's things, I told his friends to ask my parents if they wanted anything of his to remember him by. One friend requested his Nintendo. When I told Dad, Dad wasn't sure he could part with that. "It was just such a part of Adam," Dad said. Then he remembered we have 2 Nintendos. I didn't tell him that I doubt either of them work... I don't expect him to actually play them.
Essentially, keeping Adam's stuff would just create a museum of Adam. To be realistic, we should keep the room as messy as he left it. A clean, organized room of his stuff wouldn't look like a place that Adam had ever actually lived. Of course, Mom wouldn't want to have a dirty room in her house forevermore. I'm sure they'll clean it. When they do, a little part of Adam will be gone.
Mom thought about taking Adam's iPod to put her own music on it. Then she thought about it again. Is she really ready to erase that part of Adam? Probably not. I think the only things of his any of us wouldn't mind giving away or selling are his textbooks... he probably didn't use those much anyway and they certainly weren't significant to him.
But in light of this, now I'm looking at my own things in a different way. How much should I accumulate, knowing some day I'll leave it all behind? Do I really need that new sweatshirt I want? Or those books? So that some day those who miss me will be left with those things, wondering what to do with them... wanting to keep them but then realizing that if they do, it still won't bring me back to them.
I have been buying stuff for my family members throughout the year, to give them to them at Christmas/Hanukkah. Decorative wine bottle stoppers, Christmas tree ornaments, satchels of lavender, artisan made soap... I've been accumulating them in my closet all year. Now I feel I'm just adding to the load of things my loved ones will some day leave behind.
Of course, some stuff is necessary. We can't go naked. We need beds to sleep in and cars to drive. But after a certain point, it becomes excessive. Do I really need one more outfit just so I have that little bit of extra variety in my wardrobe? Probably not.
Maybe I'm just being morbid, but this sad experience of trying to resurrect my brother with his stuff and utterly failing has affected my view of the holiday season. Instead of buying people more stuff, here are some ideas I've come up with: donations/trees planted in their names, theatre or ballet tickets, art, massages, and food. I would add to the list soaps, lotions, and candles but only if the person will actually use them.
Thom Hartmann always talks about the fact that we don't make things in America any more and that manufacturing must be the foundation of any healthy economy. Otherwise we're just passing money around from one person to the next. I'm all for fixing the economy but not if it means creating more stuff that can one day sit in a room where nobody uses it.
Let's make sure that as we bring jobs back to America, we do so in a way that can be good for all of us. I like the ideas of Van Jones. We can create jobs retrofitting buildings for greater efficiency, putting up wind turbines and solar panels, or growing food.
The parts of Adam I want to keep are his school papers, his music, and our pictures of him. The rest of the stuff? It's stuff. What good to me are men's clothing that don't fit me, or a bunch of extra blankets I don't need? It's a damn shame that all of that stuff can't bring my brother back. And because it can't (and we want it to anyway) our family is left with quite a sad dilemma figuring out what to do with it.
Addendum: I forgot to make this point but I'm adding it now... one thing that REALLY bothers me about "green" products is that they make it seem like you can be green by consuming. If you need something, by all means give your business to the green company. But what is green about buying something you don't need, even if it's made from recycled soda bottles and organic cotton?