When Downsizing Pulls at One’s Heart

Diane Gillespie

I find myself, at 72 years of age, in my family room surrounded by lots of keepsakes and the memories attached to them — concert tickets, newspaper clippings, pictures galore. I have containers: a clear plastic tub for keeping things, a cardboard box for recycling, a wastebasket for what can’t be recycled.

I know from reading decluttering books that joy should be filling my family room.

My husband brings out yet another clear plastic tub. It’s been 20 years since I’ve looked inside this one.

The musty smell overwhelms me as I open it. I pick up a package — two books about friendship tied together — Joan Walsh Anglund’s A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You and a Hallmark Friendship Keepsake, both inscribed to me by “Kathy” in 1966. We must have done something special over a weekend, as her inscription noted “a great weekend” and a wish that we “stay very best of friends.” She signs it, “Your story book friend.”

In a flash, I remember her dorm room down the hall from mine where we frequently talked into the night.

Kathy Meiher lived on my dorm floor during my first year at Southern Illinois University. She transferred to another school the following year and was on her way back home from a visit to those of us who were dorm mates when she was killed in her car, which failed to stop in bad weather. It slid under the rear of a truck.