A shiny red car drove down the dirt road that led to the old farmhouse. The modern vehicle looked completely out of place in contrast to the rusty tractors next to the shabby barn. Martha stepped out of the car and looked at the place she once called home. She saw the tree that she had fell out of when she was eight after her sister dared her to climb it. She saw the cornfields that she had spent hours playing hide and seek in as a child. She saw the front porch where she had sat with her mother countless times discussing life. It had been years since she’d been home and she wished it could have been for a happy reason.

Two weeks ago, she had been on her way home from work when she got a phone call. She looked at the caller I.D. and saw that it was her father. Since her father is the type of person that could talk for hours, she considered letting it go to voicemail. They had a running joke in the family where whenever he would tell a story, Martha’s mother would say, “Jack, we just want to know the time not how the clock was built.” As the shrill ringtone started up again, Martha sighed and picked up the phone knowing that he would be angry if she ignored the call.

“Hey, Dad. This actually isn’t really a good time. I’m on my way home from work and it’s been a really long day, so…” She let the sentence trail off, hoping he would get the hint.

“Martha,” She knew at once that something was wrong. His voice sounded haunted and distant; it was nothing like the jovial tone she had always associated with him. “Your mother passed away this morning.” At first, she refused to believe it. Her mother couldn’t be dead. She was healthy and vibrant and the liveliest person she had ever known. Her father went on to tell her that her mother had gotten in a car accident and was killed instantly. Over the next two weeks, she planned the funeral with her family and assisted her father any way she could. Today, he asked her to come and help sort through her things.

As Martha walked up the creaky old steps, her father opened the front door and welcomed her inside. Her former home was exactly as she remembered it. Light streamed in through the windows and illuminated the room. The dark wooden floor groaned and creaked as she stepped on it and the house smelled like springtime to her. Before she went to college and moved out, Martha had never really thought about the smell of her home. Now coming back she recognized a clean smell with a hint of flowers, similar to the first warm day of spring after a harsh winter. Her father led her to the basement and Martha stifled a gasp. There were boxes upon boxes down there. Letters spilled out of the tops and old paintings were piled upon each other precariously.

“Wow,” was all Martha could think of to say.

“Yeah,” replied her father with an overwhelmed expression. “Your mother always thought it was important to keep things in the family. She never wanted to throw anything out.”

“I knew that.” Martha was slightly annoyed that her father talked like she didn’t really know her own mother. Maybe she hadn’t visited as often as she should have over the last few years, but that didn’t mean they weren’t close. Still, she didn’t know that her mother had kept this much. She picked up a piece of paper and read it: it was a letter from her great-grandmother to her great-grandfather about a picnic they had together one summer. It hardly looked like something worth keeping.

“I’m not saying we should get rid of everything. Your mother would come back to haunt me if I did that. No, I just want to get rid of a few things, but I’m no good at this stuff, so I thought maybe you could help.” Martha’s father looked up hopefully. She didn’t exactly know what she could do here that he couldn’t, but at that point she would have agreed to do anything to make him look any less lost or forlorn.

“Okay. Why don’t you go and get some rest though? I’ll start organizing down here and then you can just join me later or something.” He looked relieved and promised to come back after a short nap.

Martha sighed and picked a box at random. She never understood why her mother was so interested in antiques. Just because it happened a long time ago didn’t mean that it was important. Taking out an old picture frame, Martha blew off the layer of dust and looked at the photo in it. She recognized her grandmother and grandfather staring back at her. She smiled, but put it in the trash pile because they already had several pictures of her grandparents. Martha felt a fresh stab of pain as she recognized the face staring back at her in the next picture: her mother.

A tear slid down Martha’s cheek as she examined the picture more closely. In it, her mother wore a powder blue dress and smiled at the camera while she posed in front of the ocean. Her hair was long and wavy, which was weird to see because Martha had only known her mother with short hair that cut off just below her chin. Perhaps the most shocking detail was just how similar her mother looked to her now. It made Martha unbearably sad to realize she could never ask her mother where or when this picture was taken.

She picked up the next photograph in the box and saw another her mother holding Martha’s sister in their backyard. Martha’s sister, Jane, couldn’t have been older than five. One of her front teeth was missing creating an endearing grin while Martha’s mother laughed in the background. The next picture was of their dog named Queenie that they had as children. Wiping away the tears now falling freely down her cheeks, Martha moved the three photographs to the “keep” pile. She couldn’t handle throwing any of those memories away.

Martha thought about how her mother always wanted to keep old pictures and books and letters. She had always thought that her mother just hated throwing things out. She never even bothered to think why her mother would want to keep these antiques. As she looked at her mother’s young, smiling face, she realized it wasn’t at all about her mother’s fear of throwing things out. She just wanted to keep those people close to her. Since Martha hadn’t known anyone too closely mentioned in the letters or photographed, they held no attachment to her. Just thinking about getting rid of this one picture though felt like a betrayal to her mother. It was important to keep these things to remember the people. In some way their spirits must live on and be remembered because they were worth too much to be forgotten. In that moment, Martha felt a loyalty to her family, even those dead long before she was born. It was up to her to remember them.

Around two hours later, Martha’s father’s heavy footsteps signaled his approach. Looking at her organized piles, she smiled at what she accomplished. It was important to let some things go; it just didn’t make sense to keep that many boxes in such a small space. She thought about if she had written the letter or taken the picture, would she care that it would be thrown out? This technique was used to eliminate some of the antiques, but it pained Martha to pretend those memories weren’t important. There was a lot that she did keep though and some of it she would have previously discarded. Martha had vowed to remember the past and keep memories, but she also promised herself to not take it to such an extreme as her mother did. As she explained her reasoning to why she kept certain things and got rid of others, her father’s eyes filled with tears and he said with pride, “You remind me so much of your mother.” For the first time in two weeks, Martha was glad.