Döstädning

One grey afternoon as she stood reading in the nonfiction new releases section of the public library, Ruth experienced an epiphany. The cause of this unexpected revelation was a book which extolled the benefits of döstädning—Swedish Death Cleaning. From what Ruth could gather, this involved downsizing your home and your life so loved ones won’t have to dispose of your clutter when you die. The more she read, the more excited she became. She checked out the book and walked home in the April rain, twirling her umbrella and brimming with purpose. She read all afternoon and into the evening. It had been ages since she had felt so invested in an idea. This would be more than routine spring cleaning—it would be freeing. Transformational. Life-changing. It’s time, she thought. Let the Death Cleaning begin!

That night, Ruth lay awake wondering if she would feel such enthusiasm for Death Cleaning if she had a partner, in which case many household items would be shared and perhaps not so easily culled. She dismissed the thought. Afterall, Ruth had had four partners in as many decades and hadn’t ever developed an attachment to their things. When each relationship ended, Audrey, then Mel, then Candace, then Sue simply packed a U-Haul and moved out, taking the furniture, books, pots and pans with which she’d arrived. Ruth took pride in her civil, no-nonsense breakups.

Early the next morning, Ruth began sorting through long-neglected desk drawers, closets, and cupboards. The process filled her with a curious sense of altruism, as though the purging and organizing was not just for herself, but for the greater good. Ruth’s three younger sisters had produced a total of ten children, some of whom now had children of their own. As much as Ruth loved them—and perhaps because she loved them—she didn’t want to leave the work of disposing of her papers and personal belongings to her nieces and great-nieces. (There were nephews, too, but Ruth had no doubt the burden would fall to the girls.) When she grew weary from carting and cleaning, she thought of them and carried on.

Two industrious weeks later, Ruth had gone through every nook and cranny in the house. The excess included hundreds of books, both read and unread; nearly as many magazines; two milk crates of records and one of CDs; two DVD boxed sets: The L Word and Downton Abbey; a dozen still-in-the-box small appliances, many of them Christmas gifts; five tennis rackets and three pairs of swim goggles; several pairs of worn sneakers and slippers; six grocery bags of yarn; and other miscellaneous knickknacks and gadgets. She fed the shredder twenty-plus years of tax returns and financial documents. She found a set of high school yearbooks belonging to Candace, Partner #3, and FedExed them to her in Montreal. Rows of cardboard boxes filled the garage. She made three trips to Goodwill and lugged several heavy boxes to the hospital’s used book sale. Anything that could not be donated, she loaded into the trunk of her Camry and took to the dump. In the end, only a few small boxes remained. She wrote MAYBE on them in thick black magic marker.

Ruth wandered through the house for days, marvelling at its order and spotlessness. She had purchased the red brick story-and-a-half forty years before with Audrey, Partner # 1. Though Ruth’s affection for Audrey had faded with time, her love of the cozy little house had not. When they separated, Ruth had to carefully budget her civil servant salary to buy Audrey’s share, but it was worth it. Over the years, the house had been good to her, and she to it. Still, she wondered how long she would stay living there. Her knees ached when she lugged laundry up from the basement, and its one bathroom meant frequent climbs to the second floor. Each year, the snow seemed heavier, the garden weedier, and the leaves deeper. As difficult as it would be to sell and move on, Ruth comforted herself with the thought that a young family would love the house as much as she did. She made a special effort to enjoy the house all summer, then listed it with a realtor in September.

When she told her sisters, they were shocked. You’re still young! they said.

I’m seventy-five. Seventy-six in December, she reminded them.

They peppered her with questions: What about the neighbours? Your garden? The cat?

Ruth reassured them. The neighbours will visit. The garden is work. Mittens will adjust.

Six weeks later, when she purchased a condo in a shiny new building on the waterfront—a corner unit on the eighteenth floor, with views of both the river and the city—she knew in her heart she’d made the right decision.

Even on moving day, when the hired truck left for the condo, when she pulled out of the driveway for the last time and her breath caught in her throat and her eyes threatened tears, Ruth felt confident. Onward! she said, banishing self-pity. From her crate on the passenger seat, Mittens mewed in agreement.

For the most part, settling into her new place had gone well: the condo was furnished and organized; she located the nearest library branch, scouted out a new coffee shop, and began walking each morning in the waterfront park; she met the gruff building super and the gossipy condo board chair; her next-door neighbour, a woman about her age, dropped off muffins with a promise of wine once Ruth was more settled; she hosted her book club and everyone ooh-ed and ahh-ed over her new place. The only thing that troubled her were those few boxes—the ones she hadn’t donated or dumped, the ones labelled MAYBE.

Ruth tried to ignore the MAYBE boxes. She pushed them to the corner of the office, then into a closet. Still, they distracted her. They were evidence of her indecision, her lack of follow-through, her failure at Death Cleaning. Also—and this was especially troubling—there was something sentimental about those boxes. Ruth had little use for sentimentality— the very word reminded her of syrupy greeting cards, Harlequin romance novels, and Hallmark Christmas movies. Ruth regarded sentimentality as a malingering emotion, like meekness or melancholy, and avoided it at all costs.

Finally, one rainy day, disgusted by her own weakness, she opened the boxes. Their contents were innocuous enough: assorted tchotchkes, empty picture frames, old holiday decorations, two desk lamps, a few board games, and several other common household items. All things Ruth had used for years, then retired to the basement. She could not recall anything particularly significant about any of them. But she could not let them go.

On her morning walk, Ruth noticed a couple playing chess in the park. She had an idea: if she left games from the MAYBE box on a picnic table, perhaps someone would put them to use. The next day, she shoved Checkers and Parchesi into her knapsack. When she reached the park, there was no one around. She set the games on a table, then walked a little way down the path to a vacant bench. A short time later, a man and a woman stopped at the table. The man picked up the checkerboard and said something to the woman and they both laughed, then they sat down and played. Ruth walked home, smiling at a childhood memory of playing boardgames with her sisters.

Over several weeks, Ruth carried items from the MAYBE boxes to the park. She placed a brass lamp on a picnic table and an assortment of scented candles on a bench. She propped a tall ceramic giraffe under a rhododendron bush, draped several strings of Christmas lights along a cedar hedge, and hung a set of bamboo wind chimes from the eaves of the picnic shelter. She put a tin of coloured pencils and a sketchbook in a scuffed leather satchel and left it under a willow tree. Beside the drinking fountain, she left a yellow and blue teapot. On the bandshell, she set a green Fiesta-ware margarita pitcher with matching glasses. Some days she watched at a distance to see if someone claimed the items, but often she just left them to be found.

Ruth disposed of the last MAYBE item—a four-by-three-foot laminated map of the world—on the day of the first snow in December. She used pushpins to tack it to a huge, old maple tree, then sat on a nearby bench. Before long, a teenaged girl walked up to the tree, pulled a red felt-tip marker from her bag, and wrote YOU ARE HERE in large, loopy cursive across the top of the map. Ruth’s heart swelled.

That evening, Ruth went to dinner at her sister’s house. They ate spinach lasagne and Black Forest cake to celebrate Ruth’s birthday. When she returned home, Ruth poured a glass of red wine and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and watched the snow fall. The river ran liquid pewter and the city flickered as if lit by a million votive candles. A few minutes passed, then she went into the office, broke down the MAYBE boxes, gathered them under her arm, and took them to the recycle bin in the basement.

Upstairs, Ruth scrubbed her hands and returned to her place at the window. She stripped off all her clothes and spread her palms on the glass. She rested her forehead on the cool surface, then her entire body, feeling the glass warm to her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. She was sure she could see strings of Christmas lights and the glow of her old desk lamp in a distant window. She closed her eyes and, just for a moment, could hear the scratch-scratching of pencils on heavy paper, the splash of ice cubes into glasses, the hollow knock of bamboo in the wind. She leaned against the window for a long, long time, as though floating on a still pond, weightless and free.

Photo by Jennifer R. on Unsplash