The Ornament Box

We've almost emptied the many boxes which arrived with the removers last week. Of those few that remain this one will probably be left to last, partly because its contents are far from important to the daily running of our lives, partly because I'll find going through its contents difficult. It contains odd objects I have picked up along the road of my life, some inherited from my parents, all kept because I associate each with the memory of a place, an event, and/or a person.

This house is not well endowed with shelving on which these 'ornaments' can sit and collect dust during the time we live here. I recall packing them when we left Kilchoan, when many were thick with the dust I hadn't bothered to remove from them over the decade or so we lived at Matenderere.

I wonder what I will do with them when we move again, when we have to downsize to a place much smaller than this three-bedroomed house. There's little amongst them of any pecuniary value and I doubt whether many of them will appeal to my children. Some may go to a charity shop, and perhaps someone will buy them, while for some, their worth will be measured in the metal they contain.

It would be lovely to have a great funeral pyre where I ceremonially burn them, consigning the memories they hold to the skies, but I think it's unlikely I'll have the courage. Perhaps I'll be past caring, and someone will simply consign them to the bin. I wouldn't mind: they will have served their purpose.