Treasured or trashed

We live, we collect necessary and desired items. We die and leave it all for someone else to sell, trash or donate to a thrift store. You can’t take it with you. Nor can you guarantee anyone else will cherish your stuff as you do.
So why the surprise of the shopper when they found an embroidered 1940s wedding sampler at a thrift store with a couple’s names and wedding date. “Stuff like that breaks my heart. Someone put so much work into that. I guess sometimes there is no family,” the original poster commented beneath a picture of the neatly stitched piece.
Some who read the post did genealogical research online and discovered that the couple and all their children had died. No one remained to claim the wedding sampler.
We saw the same types of things while visiting an aging mother. She had saved everything, including her son’s badly broken high chair. She pointed it out to him, “When I die that will be yours.” He rolled his eyes, silently sending it to the garbage dump. That made sense.
The response to the photo albums my brother-in-law assembled did not make sense. For months he arranged family pictures with names and dates back to the 1800s. He gave one to his sister. After her funeral, her in-law approached him with a rueful smile and the album. “None of the children want this. You did a lot of work.” and handed it back to him. Later, my husband welcomed adding that album with all the family’s historical pictures to our library of photo albums.
Another heirloom – a complex quilt top – didn’t even make it to the thrift store. It barely escaped the dump. We saw it on the wall of a shop: a full sized, hand-pieced intricate quilt. A small sign said the unquilted top had been found at the local garbage dump. It had no stains, tears or marks. Evidently no one cherished the winter nights spent piecing it together. Fortunately one person recognized the art and brought it home to complete and display.
Years ago, completed cross stitch pieces caught my eye. Even though I hadn’t done the stitching, I was able to appreciate their work. I found dozens of pieces at yard sales. Eventually I combined pieces with similar themes into quilts. It’s one way to preserve other folks’ finished craft pieces. Yet, even I know that someday those quilts could end up at a thrift store priced at less than the cost of the backing fabric.
Estate sale managers know the story well. Gen-Xers and Millennials do not want the china that their parents and grandparents proudly purchased and used on special events. The next generations don’t want to deal with the fragility of china. They can’t use the gold edged china in their microwaves.
That is a big change from 40 years ago when I had a Noritake tea party set with pink rose buds. My daughter used it at childhood birthday parties. At one point I priced the set online and found only the tea pot for $100. When she had daughters I gave the set to her. She used it for their birthdays until the entire set accidentally fell and broke.. Fortunately, she found the exact same set on Ebay with shipping included for $100. The value had dropped that much.
Times change. Some cherish the memories associated with certain items.
Some cherish the relationships and the memories. Often, though, heirs look at the once-cherished item and toss it in a pile to donate or trash.
The most important inheritances comes from building relationships and memories of time spent together. It’s the best investment in the long run.