Using up my inheritance

My family has a history of passing down things from generation to generation.  Not so much with money, and not so much with valuables, just things.

To be from such a small family (only a handful), I have accumulated a lot.  I think this is because I was born into a young family; my grandmother had my mother when she was 18, my mom had me when she was 20.  That was the norm back then (and in the south), and so I was blessed to have young grandparents and to know both of my great grandmothers well.  They were alive until I was in college.

As we downsized to move here, we had some serious decisions to make about what to keep and what to give away.  No longer would we have a huge basement where we could just store things.  And we refused to put a bunch of stuff in storage out here, just to pay an additional fee every month to have it out of sight.  So, I had to face all of these family things - my inheritance, if you will - and decide where it was all going.

In a way my decision was easy: I do not have kids to pass these things down to (even if I did, they would not know these family members at all), and my brother has his own inheritance.  What I have is mine and I am free to do with it what I want.  Some stuff I did get rid of; random dishes, a cedar chest, some knick knacks.  But what I kept, I made a conscious decision to use in the apartment.  What is the point of keeping it if I'm only going to stash it away?

The decision was very liberating and has made me feel closer to my family (to those who are gone) than I ever imagined.  I am using the quilts made by my great grandmothers to add some much-needed color and warmth:

We didn't want the living room to be too brown; the quilt really livens it up.

The rest of the quilts are stashed under the bed.

I also inherited my Papa's book collection.  This is very meaningful to me because some of my favorite childhood memories are hanging out with him and Gama in their living room while we all read.  I would walk up to their bookshelf and gaze and gaze at his books.  Now they are on my bookshelves.

Not only do I display them, I read them.  I have found his old bookmarks in them, along with score papers that Gama used to keep from their domino games.  He has written notes and questions in some of the theology books and to turn the page and see his handwriting is a jolt - a good one, though.

Once again I will say how happy I am that we "had" to downsize.  It was a pain but it was also refining.  The things we are left with are the things we value, the things worth holding on to.