Save more

I don't read advice columns, nor do I really ascribe to the whole advice column notion; however, I find myself wanting to dole advice out based on the very important life lessons I have learned over the last few months. Today's lesson: SAVE STUFF

I am not a saver. Never have been.
In fact, the joke used to be that when mom would buy something for me, she would have to say: "OK, this is special. Please do not sell it in a garage sale in 18 months!" It is not that I don't appreciate things. I just have never really saved STUFF. I don't have Jess' outfit that she came home from the hospital in or the first lock of hair she had cut. However, I do have the list of the 250 words she could say before the age of 2. So I am not totally void of sentimentality. 

HOWEVER.
I was unpacking things at my new office last week and a card fell out of a Ruby Payne book. It was a birthday card from this year that I guess I stuck in that book for some reason and then when I packed all my books to ship them to the US, the card came too. It was not intentional.
But I am so very glad I did it.

Because you see, that birthday card was the one my mom sent me in March.
And now I know it is the last birthday card that I will ever get from her. In her handwriting. With her thoughts and wishes permanently scribed inside. 
So on that day in my office, I was eternally grateful for whatever prompted me to stick that card in a Ruby Payne book....

Of course, we cannot save everything. 
Otherwise we will end up seeing each other on episodes of Hoarders.

But DO save stuff. Save letters and cards and other mementoes that have a special story or person attached to them. Trust me. You think that it's silly to tote this stuff from place to place when you move, but one day you are going to lose someone so very important to you and you are going to YEARN for that just a small portion of all that STUFF.

My mom has been gone now for 33 days and at times it feels like a lifetime since I last saw her, but at other times, he feels like it was just a few seconds ago that she was taken from us. 
So I beg you.....SAVE MORE. 
Trust me.