We spend a lifetime collecting things that surround us in our homes and our lives. They remind us of our travels, fill a collection or create an heirloom as they are passed down through the family. Our parents are no different as they created the surroundings of their homes to reflect a life lived.

If we are lucky our parents have told a story about a special figurine, a favorite silver tray or a dresser that was passed down through the generations. But cataloging the history of our own lifetime treasures can be difficult enough, without trying to remember those of our parents as well.

Maybe it would be easier were you an only child, the sole recipient of the stories and the history of their treasures. But when parents have many children, some stories are shared with one and not the others. Their history is told in pieces and when your parents pass it is knitted together by the children or the family, to create a story of their lives and the importance of the things that surrounded them.

So, as I begin the task of starting to sort my mothers home, to sift through a lifetime of memories and collections, I am at a bit of a loss. For my mother has not passed and her treasures are still in her home. The history is there waiting to be remembered and shared. But mom cannot breath life into them anymore. I am not able to call her and ask about a table or a carving or where we got a certain shell that sits prominently displayed in a cabinet. She lives but her memory is missing, her stories gone, her adventures lost and with it, the history of her treasures.

I look around me and know some of what is important to save but forget the significance of others. So I call and text photos to my sister and brother and begin to slowly piece the picture of my parents lives back together again. Trying to remember what was passed down to my parents from my grandparents, if a figurine that sits on a bookshelf is worth keeping and if a dresser next to her bed was a family heirloom.

And in the midst of it I feel robbed. It is as if a thief came in and stole much of what mattered from our lives. Because in the end if we can’t cobble together a history, many of her treasures, the things that brought her joy, are reduced to being just stuff. Our family history, the stories waiting to be shared in the things that surrounded us, lost forever to dementia.