“You can’t save everything,”
my sister said as we went room by room
through the house of our mother,
who pretty much did.

Though hers was more of a case of
not-getting-rid-of, of stuffing more stuff
into an already full drawer or cupboard,
which turned the sorting of them after
her death into an archaeological
excavation of our family.

I hear her now:
I did get rid of rubber bands,
you know. I didn’t save all of them
like Grandma did.

Which was true, especially since my sister,
the minimalist, periodically went through
the junk drawer, quietly tossing brittle bands
that snapped and dead pens whose veins
had long since dried up—not to mention
appointment cards from the long-gone barber
on the corner who cut our father’s hair
for decades.

But after—oh, the after—the lightning fast
cleaning out quickened my pulse, spun
my archivist’s heart with its urgency.
I didn’t object—it made sense to clear
out the house so it could be remade anew
for the next generation in the family
now making it their own.

But what to save? What to let go?
Life’s perennial dilemma for those of us
who hang onto too much. Which of my
mother’s many books do I box and
trundle home? (Too many.) How many
of her notebooks filled in class after class
in the lifetime of this forever student?
(Dozens.)

Now surrounded by towers of boxes in
my living room, I remove each lid, pick up
her objects, study her handwriting as if
it holds secrets, which it might.
I cannot toss the folders en masse,
searching for insight, the rare bit
of self-reflection.

I find haiku and aspirations,
and oh, the treasure of photographs—
a formal portrait in an off-the-shoulder
black formal, snapshots on the dock
at a summer camp in Wisconsin, or
pulling an arrow from the bullseye
surrounded by other young archers.

“Look at you,” I say, peering closely at her
face on the deckled-edged glossy paper,
the girl who had no idea what was to come,
whom she would love, the children she
would make, the life she would live.

“Look at you,” I whisper to that
dark-haired girl staring into her future.
“Look at me.”