John Updike captured the stubborn futility of hanging onto our stuff in his short story, “The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe”—he calls it “thrift’s absurd inertia.”

I looked up the word futility in my grandmother’s 1938 multivolume set of The Universal Dictionary of the English Language (I keep this set in one of three bookcases I own that will have to go when we eventually downsize; two of which I absolutely will not part with.) In simple language, it is hard for some of us to throw things away.

Futility means worthlessness. When applied to people, it means inept. When applied to action, it mean ineffectual or fruitless. I resemble that. I have made fruitless attempts to cull family photos that date back generations. In the face of the pile of pictures still gathering dust on the table, I am inept.

Have you ever had this conversation with your parents? Worse, have your kids had this conversation with you? 

–Throw this away, Mom!

–I might need it someday.

–If that happens, buy a new one. The new models are much better.

–This one is in perfect condition.

Spoiler alert: I’m going to give away the story’s ending.

In Updike’s story, generations of stuff in an old man’s barn literally comes crashing down and pin him flat to the floor. In the instant he sees the destruction that’s coming, his depression lifts.

I wonder if there is a universal principle at work here. If you don’t deal with the accumulation of your stuff, your possessions will have the last word.

Of course, some stuff is a precious reminder of those who have gone before us. So many of my generation seem compelled to write memoirs that I wonder if the motive is to preserve in time and space those they loved (and those they did not). Although my novel, The Sheep Walker, is not a memoir, the story reflects some family characteristics. The women in our family were strong women, my mother used to tell me. I explored where that strength came from and how it played out through the generations.

Are you loathe to throw away grandma’s Bavarian china? Preserve the best piece in a photograph or watercolor. Memorialize it in detail in Haiku or short story. Then find a new home for it. When you do, please let me know who wants this stuff.