On Garbage and Grief
The black plastic contractor bags sit in the hallway like oversized, heavy boulders. They are filled with forty years of someone’s life, now reduced to what the city waste management system refers to simply as “refuse.” Sorting through a late relative’s home after they pass away is an exercise in brutal prioritisation. You stand in the center of a living room that once felt infinite, holding an empty cardboard box in one hand, staring around at a lifetime of accumulated material. It takes roughly three days to realise that most of what we own is just garbage waiting for its cue.
There are three distinct categories of things we leave behind. The first is obvious waste. This category is comprsied of cracked Tupperware, expired coupons, dried-up ballpoint pens, and instruction manuals for appliances long discarded. This goes into the bag without a second thought - except perhaps to wonder why these objects were kept in the first place. Next, you’ll find the second category, littering every horizontal surface - the keepsakes. These are the items that carried real, resonant memory. A well-worn watch, a handwritten recipe card, a photograph with the corners folded. These fit easily into a single small box. But the vast majority comprises the third category: the heavy middle. This is the endless expanse of items kept purely out of fear, guilt, or obligation.
That third category is where the true weight of a house lives. It’s the fine china set used twice in thirty years, saved because it was an engagement gift from an aunt no one liked. It’s the stack of unused notebooks kept because throwing away blank paper feels wasteful. It’s the collection of souvenir mugs, the half-finished craft projects, the extra towels "just in case." We hang on to these things during our lives because discarding them feels like an admission of failure. Getting rid of the fine china means admitting the grand dinner parties will never happen. To toss the unused exercise equipment is to relinquish a future version of ourselves we still hope to become. So we keep them, letting them collect dust, confusing physical possession with emotional preservation.
Standing over a trash bin with an armful of someone else’s guarded treasures is deeply humbling. You realise that memory doesn't actually adhere to plastic, ceramic, or cloth. The obligation to keep something ends the moment it no longer serves a purpose or brings joy, whether the person who bought it is still here or not. You hold a chipped porcelain figurine or a pristine stack of stationery from 1984, and you feel the phantom weight of the care that went into preserving it. Someone carefully dusted that figurine for decades. Someone saved those note cards for an occasion special enough to warrant them—an occasion that simply never came. We convince ourselves that memory adheres to plastic, ceramic, and cloth, mistaking the physical artifact for the sentiment that inspired its purchase. But objects are terrible vaults for memory; they crack, they fade, and mostly, they just take up space. The obligation to preserve an item ends the moment it ceases to serve a living person or bring genuine comfort. Letting go of an unwanted heirloom isn't an act of betrayal or disrespect to the person who died; it's a recognition that their legacy lives in how they made us feel, not in their unused dinnerware.
Eventually, the final contractor bag is tied off, the estate sale tables are cleared, and the key turns in the lock one last time. The house, stripped of its clutter, feels unnaturally large, the echoes softening into a hollow, neutral quiet. Driving home through the quiet streets, a strange, creeping realization settles in. You walk through your own front door, drop your keys on the counter, and look around your living room with entirely new eyes. You see the crammed closet in the hallway, the stack of unread magazines on the bottom shelf, the boxes of "someday" items tucked under the bed. You realize how easily we begin building our own monuments to fear and obligation, quietly accumulating our own future inheritance of clutter. Standing in the middle of your own home, surrounded by your own curated life, you can't help but wonder how many heavy black bags you are currently living alongside, and how much lighter you might feel if you released them instead of leaving them for someone else.
Jennifer