Down in the Valley

This blog has some interesting (to me) issues having to do with what do I keep and what do I throw away. I am not a typical hoarder who keeps everything. I have some small piles, here and there, of things I go through periodically. I purge. But here are some things I keep:

1. I keep books. Lots of books.
2. I keep photos (but I’m going slowly digital).
   • family; places; artistic stuff
3. My Mom’s paintings.
4. Craft supplies (OMgoodness)

My conundrum of the week? What to do with my Aunt Carolyn’s final box of things? I’ve scanned the photos. But there are also her writings, or maybe they were Grandma’s writings. Why is this even an issue, you ask? Because she disassociated herself from everyone during her life. Because everyone besides me (and sister), who cared about her, is dead. At least that’s how this feels. I look at the box of stuff, and think no one cares but me. My sweet sister is purging her life of things that don’t matter. My cousins, I think, are pretty busy and uninterested. Carolyn’s siblings are dead. Her parents are dead. We have no idea if there are cousins alive in her age group, maybe back east, who would be interested.

But I tend to be a historian. This started when I would look through the photos our parents took… Birthdays, Christmas, Vacations. Then I had my own family, my own children. I’ve loved cameras, taking photos since I was maybe eight years old. I had a little Brownie camera. You had to load the thing with film. Just like a real, adult camera. I took terrible photos of things. My friends, some artistic stuff… I would put make my sister or my friends put their hand out underneath Camelback Mountain, as if they were holding it… That sort of silly kid stuff.

I realized I was fixing history in time with my camera. But how do I fix Aunt Carolyn in time? She lived an angry, solitary life after our grandma died. But when my mom became sick, she wanted to see her sister. I searched and searched, not realizing the address I found was legitimate, as it was seriously out in the middle of the Arizona nowhere. I didn’t get into my car to drive out to look. I was still working. I couldn’t imagine this was an actual place. A home. Google maps couldn’t find the address. So I thought the address was bogus. A few years ago a church in the area where she actually did live contacted us to say she had passed away. Boom. In a bad way, boom. Mom was dead by now. The church people said Carolyn was an active member. A sweet Christian lady. Wow. That isn’t even in any of our memories. It wasn’t on the bandwidth of any of our memories. If I had gone out there, perhaps her story would be different… in our minds.

Now I have a box of stuff. There were more belongings than that, obviously, but probate, etc… And now. I have a box. Carolyn shouldn’t pass into history without being noticed. I think I’m so interested because my Mom loved Carolyn. Mom loved all her siblings, but Franny died a long time ago. Bert died almost directly after Mom. Carolyn was left alone. She probably thought she was alone, but didn’t know how true her aloneness was by that time.

I do know a couple things. She sewed. She painted, like my Mom, and she wrote a lot of stuff.

This blog will be the first public tribute to Aunt Caroline. The main photo is a picture of her with my Dad. She was cute. She had a difficult life for which she held everyone but herself responsible. But maybe in the end, she understood her life choices better.

I’ve decided to go through the box. I won’t put everything in the trash. I just can’t do that. Besides, maybe there will be a part two of this blog to tell you what I found. The writings and papers may hold the key to who Aunt Carolyn was in the end.

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