These Covid times can’t help but bring mortality to the fore and with that the realization that ‘somebody’ will have the task of dealing with that which remains, including ‘belongings’. I’ve done that for a number of people over the years and gladly too but I wanted items to go to places and people who could use, would like them. I knew from experience others might not have time to do that in the kind of detail I, while alive, could do. So that’s what I did, I started in on a Swedish Death Cleaning and it has brought me much happiness, and much satisfaction too.
This poem piece along with the writing it appeared with spoke to me. I hope it speaks to you. In future posts I will visit some of the discoveries I made in January, how I ‘resolved’ many items that had been with me for at least two decades which I’d not made decisions about. Left to languish.
learning to save myself, learning to live
alone through the long winter nights
means so much unknotting, unknitting
unraveling, untying the mother-cord
— so much undoing
From: Michèle Roberts’s poetry collection ‘All the selves I was‘
The following is from: a blog Rousette The title of the post is, Re-visiting poetry.
Over the intervening years, I’ve done a lot of metaphorical unknotting and unraveling, and plenty of literal unknitting and unpicking too. I’ve come to see those processes not as a failure but as an integral part of the making process. Making and unmaking are part of the same thing, and if you want to learn, to grow, to experiment, to be bold, you often have to unmake. Yes, it can be frustrating or even painful, but it’s a good thing. Unmaking and making anew almost always results in something better and stronger, and in the process, you learn. You just have to be brave, take a deep breath, and get out your seam ripper.
Finally, this has not been a process of ‘decluttering’, or preparation for death. Better described as an undoing a cutting of the mother-cord, a spiritual endeavor. Thanks to Julius for the link which inspired me to write about the process that started in January and continues on.