Sorting a Stepmother's Things After the Newtown Shooting What do we do with the things people leave behind? What does it mean to move on, from the death of someone you love, or a divorce, which is a death of a different kind? The past months have presented me with both - my stepmother, Dawn Hochsprung, was killed at the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., and my husband and I have divorced after 10 years of marriage. Both of these losses have left me reeling. Last week the pain and grief from these deaths were handed to me in physical form: my dad gave me eight boxes of personal effects from my stepmother's office, packed up for him by the police, and my ex (no, I mean my "co-parent") dropped off five boxes of my things, the last remnants of our life together. What do I do with all of these things? A quick glance into the boxes and it felt difficult to breathe. Dawn's were half full of books, (easy; donated them to my school) but the rest of the items have stopped me in my tracks. Worn emery boards, a comb with strands of her hair in it, piles of thank you cards from years of students (my favorite says, "You are important to our school because you get supplies and money and eat lunch with the bad kids." Is that what being a principal means?) There's a Dove candy wrapper that she saved ("Be mischievous. It feels good."), stationery with her name on it, magnets and tampons and photographs. I felt like some kind of voyeuristic god, going through these boxes. The power to decide the fate of these items rests in my hands. Who am I to say keep it or throw it out? It felt eerie and strange. Our desks are places we keep things that we need, things that are important to us, but that we don't want other people to see. If I keep them, does that mean I'm not letting myself move on and heal? If I throw them out, isn't that dismissive of her memory and things that she obviously kept because they had value? Many of the items feel like a connection to her, a physical one (those strands of hair) that I'll never have again. Is this morbid? Opening up my boxes from home felt the same. Here they were, these physical reminders of what used to be. Again, the books were the easiest - I'm an English teacher, I will always love another copy of "A Prayer for Owen Meany" - but the other stuff was hard, photos from happier times, trips we'd taken together, when our children were first born, or cards I'd saved from over the years, anniversaries and birthdays, and the (rare in the last few years) random HEY! Reading those in my husband's (I mean ex, no wait, co-parent's) particular scrawl hurt. I remember when he did love me that much. I remember when I loved him back that much. Things were bright and simple. And the same questions confront me. What do I keep and what do I throw away? I don't want to dismiss all the good times, and certainly our two children (now 5 and 2) are reminders of all our successes. I would never wish those memories away. But at the same time, those memories are painful, because they serve as reminders of what we had together and lost. How can I hang on to them in a way that affirms their value but doesn't turn me into a pillar of salt, forever looking back? I don't want to be like Lot's wife. In his book "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien talks about the dual meanings of the word "carry" - he uses this extended metaphor throughout the book, that people carry both tangible and intangible items throughout their lives. Often, he seems to say, the intangibles weigh more because, in part, you can never put them down as you could, say, a heavy backpack. This metaphor comes back to me now, as I am surrounded by these boxes. Filled with tangible objects, they are also filled with intangible emotion. Even if I do throw them away, those intangibles aren't going to disappear. For now I think I'll close them up and put them in a closet. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to have to wait for the "ambulance of time" (I read that somewhere in a poem) to arrive before I can do much else.