Sorting Client's Memorabilia is a Reminder That it's People Who Matter
Fess up, now. Where do you keep all your important family photos and letters?
In neatly designed scrapbooks and photo albums? Or are they in more modest trappings... say, maybe like shoe boxes? Don’t worry, I won’t wag my finger. Most of my memorabilia sits in plastic bins awaiting the day I’m inspired and energetic enough to sort and arrange it all in a manner befitting its importance. I know. Professional organizer that’s not so organized. Ironic? Yes. But shameful? Well, kinda... we work one day a week with a charming elderly gentleman, helping him organize his extensive memorabilia, so he can enjoy it in albums, scrapbooks, and on DVDs, and ultimately, so his children and grandchildren will one day have meaningful keepsakes of their family history.
Wednesdays at 1:30, we ring the bell and our client opens the door in jeans, a flannel shirt, and suspenders, and his tiny white dog by his feet. He invites us, not just into his home, but into his life. As we sort through the hundreds of slides, photos, letters, and clippings, we meet our client’s relatives, colleagues, and friends. Each photo, every carefully written journal entry, tells a story, and our client fills in the details. We marvel at daguerreotypes from the 1800s. We reverently open and read the dancecards his mother saved from college “doings” a century ago. He shares with us his wedding, the births of his children, the houses they lived in, the trips they took, and the many moves they made as our client’s prodigious career took them from one great University to another.
As we sort through these mementos, our client describes the special people in his life —secretaries, students, friends, children, patients, and even a waitress at Belle's Diner. One letter brought a rare sadness to his face, and he spoke of a colleague who presented him with a poorly written manuscript for our client’s comments. It was a letter he had agonized over. An old photo of a dog brings the smile back. It’s Albert, a beloved basset hound. The professional awards are endless. "I don’t know what to do with them," he says, shaking his head, still astonished that ever received them in the first place. The biggest award comes this year — a lifetime achievement award from an illustrious professional group. But the award he’s proudest of in his long career is a "Boss of the Year" certificate presented to him two decades ago. The scores of clippings about him and articles he penned, he saves out of duty for his children. But the ones he most wants to keep and re-read are the letters of recommendation and referrals he has written for others.
Have you ever spent an afternoon looking through family photos that aren’t organized? It gives you a time-tripping kind of feeling. There’s our client as a newborn baby. There he is in high school. Now he’s 5, playing in the snow. Now he’s at his retirement party. And here he sits at the dining table with us, smiling over memories. It’s like Kurt Vonnegut’s character, Billy Pilgrim, becoming “unstuck in time,” one moment giving a speech as an old man, the next moment in Dresden Germany during the war. If you do this long enough and often enough, it offers you a perspective that life is a collection of moments. That one happened after another becomes irrelevant. It’s a reminder that time is short and that the people we love are what matters. For us, browsing through this man’s history is a gift, because we have come to know him so well and to care about the people he loves — people we will never know.
Our client says we have helped him, and I’m glad. But he has done so much more for us. These Wednesday afternoons with him in his home, his little dog always by his side, have been among the most rewarding in my time at The Betty Brigade.
