The day before I flew to Florida to help my mother move to a new apartment, I lost a man I was close to.  Death came suddenly to him at the age of 60.  He was an athlete and an outdoorsman but the last time I saw him he wasn’t looking well.  And he seemed to have developed an edge.  He was more fidgety than usual, more agitated.  But we spoke of the future.  He wanted to retire someday.  He wanted to travel to Italy.  He wanted to watch his grandbabies grow up.  His plans were never grand.  He lived simply, had very basic needs and died too soon.

As my husband and I flew through Atlanta en route to Ft. Lauderdale, my friend was having his memorial service a few miles away.  When you die, though, you no longer live in any particular place.  You’re everywhere.  That’s what I have to believe.

My father died nearly three-and-a-half years ago, leaving my mother (and all of us) at the age of 86.  He went on to the hereafter and my mother remained in the condo they had shared for 31 years.  Then, the day finally came, three years later, that my mother was struggling with the two flights of stairs that led to their unit.  She could still walk across the 18-hole golf course to get to the a gym so she could  pump iron for two hours (pretty good for 89) but those stairs were screwing up one of her legs.  It was time to move on.

Everybody moves on in different ways and in their own time.

When I left Atlanta 10 years ago, I cried for the first two hours of the trip, and intermittently ever after.  I return to Atlanta with regularity because I feel a sense of connection there.  I go back to my old neighborhood and look at my house of 20 years and, for a few minutes, I feel like I still live there. I absorb all the greenery. I  remember the camaraderie of the neighbors. I take in the spirit of the cats I loved there. Then I move on, until the next time.

My mother left her home of 34 years without a backwards glance.  She said she would miss the view of the golf course. And then she was out of there, crabbing down those steps for the last time.  She was looking forward to meeting new people, being served and taking advantage of all the activities available to her.

Maybe it’s healthier to do things that way.  I make a big production number out of everything.  I even had my mother cook one last meal so I could photograph it. It was salmon, spaghetti and canned vegetables.  I said, “Ma, this’ll be the last time you ever cook.”  And she said, “Good.”  And that was that.

Of course, trying to decide what to leave behind after all those years is another story.  Some of the decisions are made for you because it’s about practicality.  For example, my mother loved the enormous formica bedroom set that took movers six hours to install but it made no practical sense to bring such a leviathan to her newer, smaller apartment in an independent living facility.  Instead, she took the guest bed with the brass headboard from her early married years, the mattress that belonged to my cousin 60 years before and dressers that became a part of my adolescent bedroom in New York after my paternal grandmother passed away and left us the furniture.  Some items just move along with you.  And they have their own energy.

There were certain items she would never need again – like pots and pans.  But she recently discovered that the old PVC chairs in her Florida room were really comfortable.  She wasn’t going to have a Florida room or a porch in her new apartment but we took one of those chairs for her anyway.  Some things, you just have to have. Like I have a sweater in my closet that my maternal grandmother bought me in Alexander’s in Queens when I was 13.  I keep it because when I see it, it’s a visit with her. 

My mother’s new apartment is actually quite large – even the formica bedroom set might have fit into it – but it would’ve been a burden. Even now, it’s a burden – nobody wants it, including consignment shops, charities or even strangers on the street. The guy who bought the place doesn’t want it, either – so it will leave the condo, one way or the other.  It will probably end up in a landfill, which leads to another phenomenon – what’s one person’s treasure is another person’s trash.  Sad, but true.

I’m sentimental, I admit.  But, when push comes to shove, I get rid of stuff that is no longer necessary.  I may keep handwritten letters forever, but I can part with trophies and flower pots and other junk that people tote around and get buried under.  But I photograph it before I take my leave of it and, in doing so, memorialize it as a part of my life.  I tend to make time capsules that live on forever.

In the end, you take what you need for your new life and a little bit of what you want to remind you of your old life.  And you realize it is all one life, after all.

After we got my mother settled into her new home, my husband and I spent one more night at the condo in my parents’ big formica bed before walking down those Chattahoochee stone stairs forever.  I left remnants of all the Littmans there – my parents and their progeny, other family and friends. I left behind the memories, the good and the bad.  I sat in the one remaining PVC chair – the one I was likely sitting in when I spoke to my dying cat on the phone in 2002 and where I cried for my father and where I now mourned my friend and my tears began to flow. 

My husband and I looked out onto the golf course one last time and, after a week of bright sunshine, it was now pouring-down rain.