After I requested my mom what she would possibly like for her birthday this 12 months, she rapidly texted again: Nothing. We’re downsizing.
My dad and mom already dwell in a small home — a former fishing cabin on the sting of a lake. Our household moved a couple of instances when my brothers and I had been rising up, our childhood belongings pared down at every step. My dad and mom relocated after we graduated from school, stripping their belongings down additional and delivery what furnishings was left to every of us youngsters. I bought the Sellers Hoosier, a wood hutch with a built-in tin flour bin and a steel bread kneading shelf, now greater than 100 years previous, that my great-grandmother used to bake on.
I puzzled what was left for them to downsize. After which it hit me: Have been they doing the Swedish loss of life clear? “Döstädning: The Mild Artwork of Swedish Demise Cleansing” is the bestselling e-book that sparked a TV present and popularized a decluttering approach that has folks clear up their belongings earlier than they die, so their family and friends received’t should. My mom might be 80 this 12 months, my father 82 — was there one thing they weren’t telling me?
It turned out that my dad and mom hadn’t seen the present or learn the e-book. The true downside was that that they had simply inherited a bunch of “stuff” from my aunt, who has dementia and was transferring into assisted dwelling. My mother instructed me about all of the issues my aunt had treasured and saved that now sat in cardboard packing containers: plates and linen dish towels commemorating the British Royals; Hummel collectible figurines (and a few fakes); newspaper clippings. There have been additionally letters, pictures, notes and journals. Birthday playing cards. These private gadgets we save, personal and particular solely to us. Our “stuff.” My aunt had by no means supposed for anybody else to see it or should cope with it.
My mom didn’t assume it was acceptable to throw any of it away, not whereas my aunt was nonetheless alive. “She requested that among the Princess Diana issues be despatched to you,” Mother confessed. “However,” she whispered, “I don’t assume you’d need it.” She’s proper, I don’t, however the bigger query is: Who does?
The concept of döstädning (and the truth that my aunt clearly didn’t get round to it) made me take into consideration all of the stuff I’ve collected through the years. After I moved from New York to Los Angeles greater than 20 years in the past, I couldn’t afford to ship most of my books, so I despatched solely probably the most valuable, signed editions I had. I additionally despatched the journals I’d written in for years, filled with the small particulars of my life in New York Metropolis. What I wore on a primary date. A promotion. An unrequited crush. I used to be transferring to Los Angeles for love, however I couldn’t half with these chronicles of all my earlier relationships.
Now these journals dwell within the storage of my household’s Los Feliz home. I do know precisely which plastic bin they’re in, although I haven’t learn them since I left New York. If I had been to die tomorrow, how would I really feel about another person studying them — my dad and mom, my son, my husband? And if I don’t need anybody studying them after I’m gone, why have I saved them?
This led me to ask my family and friends: Is there something that you’d need routinely destroyed after your loss of life, earlier than your family members discovered it? A lot of the solutions revolved round intercourse: bare pictures, intercourse toys, pornography, soiled notes and sexts. Different solutions had been extra comical: A pot stash they didn’t need youngsters to seek out; particularly, weed butter within the freezer. The key household in New Jersey (I assume he was joking).
Some folks revealed that that they had pacts with a good friend or relative to destroy sure gadgets after their loss of life. I cherished the concept of a trusted good friend tossing all my buried secrets and techniques, till I remembered what occurred to Franz Kafka. His good friend and literary executor, Max Brod, had been entrusted to burn all of Kafka’s letters and manuscripts after his loss of life — a want Kafka put in writing, although Brod instructed him he wouldn’t do it. Certainly, Brod revealed the fabric, and we might not have “The Trial,” “The Fortress” or different nice works had he adopted Kafka’s directions.
Did Brod have the appropriate to overrule his good friend? Maybe it’s higher to ask if Kafka had the appropriate to ask that the manuscripts be destroyed. As an artist, do you owe the world your work, even after loss of life?
My good friend Cecil, a novelist, says: “As artists, it’s our gig to maintain the embarrassing issues that encourage us round. We’re advanced, and hopefully everybody will get that.” She says her journals would make a “boring learn” — but when she requested me to destroy all her works after her loss of life and I discovered some lovely piece of writing amongst them, I’d be torn about the right way to proceed.
Despite the fact that I’ve revealed a memoir and works of fiction that permit readers a glimpse into my life, I nonetheless have elements of myself that I don’t need anybody to see. On this age of over-sharing, speaking about what I’d need worn out after my loss of life has given me a greater understanding of döstädning and its enchantment. It’s much less about saving our households from having to do the cleaning-up work, and extra about making use of some small measure of management over how we’re remembered by these we cherished. Maybe it’s additionally a nudge to dwell a life worthy of remembering — intercourse toys and all — whereas we nonetheless can.
Cylin Busby is an writer and screenwriter. Her newest e-book is “The Bookstore Cat.”
