Tag Archives: writing

The Emotional Journey of Swedish Death Cleaning

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Today I drove a carload of boxes to Laramie and made the final major delivery for my Swedish death-cleaning project.

One destination was the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The boxes contained decades of my life: research materials, hard drives, scrapbooks, manuscripts, photographs, films, books, and assorted records from projects that occupied countless hours over the years.

A separate box held watercolor paintings my mother created. Those went to the Laramie Plains Museum. Some will become part of the museum’s collection, while others will help support its mission through fundraising auctions.

As I handed everything over, I found myself experiencing mixed emotions. The handoff took all of 10 minutes.

Kind of anticlimactic, considering I’ve been sorting and sifting since the Wyoming Writers Inc. conference at the beginning of June. AHC staffer Brie Blasi asked if I’d donate my stuff.

Part of me felt a sense of relief. My materials are no longer stacked in closets, on shelves, and in corners, waiting for me to decide their fate. They now have a permanent home where they can be organized, preserved, and, if anyone finds value in them, used by future researchers, historians, students, or curious people.

Another part of me felt a touch of sadness. Every box represented a chapter of my life. The manuscripts reflected ideas I chased. The photographs captured moments that seemed important enough to save. The films documented stories and people I believed should be remembered. Letting go of them felt a little like saying goodbye to old companions.

Yet there was also comfort in knowing that I have not really lost them. If I ever need to revisit a project, confirm a memory, or look up some forgotten detail from my past life, I can make the trip to Laramie and review the materials. They are stored in a different place now.

This delivery marked the culmination of a process that has taken years. Along the way, I sold my grandmother’s Sony micro TV and Star Wars action figures I used for gender bias training. Colleagues purchased my sports card and political memorabilia collections. Other items found new homes through donations and gifts.

I hope the people who have received my stuff enjoy it. All my items spent years, sometimes decades, in my care. Collections are curious pursuits. We think we own them, but we’re only temporary caretakers. Eventually they move on to the next person, carrying their stories with them.

There’s little left. Some clothes. Some shoes. A few personal possessions. My car. The essentials.

I’m an organ donor. I imagine those will make it into worthy sick people if my parts aren’t too worn out.

What surprised me most about Swedish death cleaning is that it was never really about getting rid of stuff. It’s about deciding what mattered and what stories deserved a future beyond my shelves and storage boxes.

The works my mother painted will now have lives of their own. Some may hang on walls where people who never knew her will pause for a moment and admire her work. Others may help support a museum dedicated to preserving local history. In their own way, they will continue telling part of her story.

The same is true of the boxes I delivered. The manuscripts, photographs, films, and research materials represent a lifetime of curiosity and creativity. Long after I am gone, someone may open a folder, examine a photograph, watch a film, or read a manuscript and discover a small piece of the world as I saw it.

There is something comforting about that.

For years, I thought I was collecting things. Today, I realized I was collecting stories.

Now those stories belong to the future.

As I sit at an EV charging station writing this, listening to Jalan Jalan Crossland on Wyoming Public Radio & Media, I feel a sense of peace. My mother’s work has found a home. My work has found a home. The burden of holding on is replaced by the satisfaction of passing it all forward.

My final act of stewardship is not keeping material objects forever.

It’s about making sure they can continue their journey without me and not end up in the landfill.

One Slide at a Time

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Rediscovering history before it fades away

I’ve been putting off the slide viewing for years. Sorting my stuff for the American Heritage Center motivated me to go through them.

The task seemed simple enough. I have boxes and carousels of slides and photographs accumulated over decades. I’ll take the hard copies to the AHC. My plan is to digitize them and create an online archive by signing up for another Google Drive.

Kodachrome was top quality in its day. A status symbol. The best prints. Kodak quit making Kodachrome, and I don’t want photos on the walls.

Now, all I want are fuzzy reference shots.

The thought of reviewing the slides daunted me, since I haven’t looked at them in decades. Some are labeled. Others are complete mysteries. I know there are family photos, travels, community projects, and who knows what else. There are stories worth preserving in those boxes. The challenge is finding and remembering them.

I stopped procrastinating.

I dug out my analog Kodak Carousel projector and created a makeshift digitizing station in the basement. The projector throws images onto a portable screen. An iPhone mounted on a flexible arm photographs each slide as it appears. The arrangement would horrify a professional archivist, but perfection wasn’t the goal. I just needed reference images good enough to identify people, places, and events.

The setup looks ridiculous, but it works.

In about 90 minutes, I clicked through four carousels.

Some images brought immediate recognition.

“That’s my uncle’s living room in Peru.”

“There’s Grandma.”

“I remember that train ride to Machu Picchu.”

Others were complete puzzles.

“Who are these people?”

“Where was this taken?”

Why did I think this was important enough to photograph 50 years ago?

As the images appeared one after another, I realized the project is about photography and about memory. Photographs freeze a moment in time, while memories fade. The two are complementary. The people who can identify the faces in old pictures don’t stay around forever. If nobody writes down the names and stories, eventually the photographs become anonymous.

I mentioned my progress to a neighbor. He wasn’t nearly as excited as I was, probably because he’s not ready to cut loose. My neighbor on the other side of the sidewalk is purging his mothballed business and saw my setup in the basement. I told him I’d keep it set up if he wanted to look at his slides.

The process reminded me why I’ve been engaged in a bit of Swedish death cleaning. The goal is to leave behind fewer mysteries for friends and family.

Before anything can be preserved, it has to be identified.

Because the sun comes up early, It’ll take me a few more days to look at everything in the relatively dark room.

The setup may be imperfect and takes up a lot of space. Analog slides are cumbersome, having to manually load them, being sure they’re right side up and not backward. I had two piles ready to store, but the apparatus irritated one of my neighbors who tossed them in a box out of disgust. It took up a lot of space in a common area. I should have rubberbanded them together.

The images I record will not be museum quality, but each click of the projector reveals another piece of my otherwise forgotten puzzle.

Some mysteries are solved instantly. Others require a little detective work, but every slide I identify is one less story at risk of being lost.

Those old carousels turned out to be time machines after all. I visited Peru for a family reunion, explored the Superstition Mountains in search of the Lost Dutchman, attended Nixon’s 1973 Inauguration, and, in high school, traveled to Alaska and met my long-lost Uncle Buck.

The real destinations are the stories that the photos bring to mind.

The Credit Card I Can’t Read

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A braille credit card and a season in a wheelchair changed how I see the world

When my Discover card expired, the company offered several replacement designs. I could choose a cat, a dog, flags, business logos, and a bunch of others.

Instead, Braille caught my eye.

The funny thing is, I can’t read Braille.

When the card arrived, I ran my fingers across the raised dots and realized they were completely meaningless to me. Embedded on that card is information that someone who is visually impaired could understand immediately. To me, it might as well be Morse code.

At first, I thought my new card was a novelty. Then I started thinking about all the Braille I’ve encountered over the years.

The elevator in the building where my office is located has Braille on every button. I’ve never knowingly shared the elevator with someone who was blind or visually impaired, but I’m sure I have. Most of us don’t notice accessibility features because we’re not the people who need them.

At least that’s what I used to think.

Twelve years ago, I had a medical emergency that left me hospitalized and then in rehabilitation. For about two months, I depended on a wheelchair and a walker.

Suddenly, the world looked different.

I became aware of every curb, every step, every narrow doorway, and every inaccessible entrance. Ramps and their location became important.

What I discovered was that retrofitted ramps weren’t designed into buildings. The accessible entrance was around the side, down an alley, or at the far end of a parking lot. While able-bodied people walked straight to the front door, people using wheelchairs, walkers, scooters, and canes had to travel farther to get to the same destination.

I noticed things I had never paid attention to before.

Even today, I find myself looking for ramps. Once you’ve spent time navigating the world from a wheelchair, it’s difficult not to notice how much extra effort accessibility can require.

That’s why I find my braille credit card strangely meaningful.

The raised dots don’t help me make a purchase or tell me anything I can understand, but they remind me that the world includes people whose experiences are different from mine.

Accessibility is about accommodations for a small group of people and about recognizing that all of us move through life differently. At one time, I was young and healthier. Then I recovered from surgery. Temporary conditions become permanent.

The truth is that accessibility isn’t for “other people.” Given enough time, it becomes relevant to all of us.

The Braille on my credit card serves a practical purpose for someone who cannot see. For me, it serves as a reminder that thoughtful design matters.

Inclusion is invisible until you need it, and a reminder that every person deserves the dignity of navigating the world independently.

Maybe I should learn to read Braille. Not because I expect to lose my sight anytime soon, but because understanding another person’s experience is never a wasted effort.

When I pull that card from my wallet, I run my thumb across those raised dots and think about the ramps, elevators, curb cuts, and countless other accommodations that most of us pass by without noticing.

They’re reminders that a community works best when it works for everyone.