Chucking Out Memories Poem by C Richard Miles

We chucked my dad’s stuff out the other day,
Stuff accumulated over nearly eighty years.
It’s nine years since he died (almost to the day)
And now, yes now, my mother wants to clear a space
To empty one more cupboard in their bedroom.
And so I sift through back bank statements
Carefully amassed in order, each item ticked off
With meticulous correct precision every month.
My mother saves hers up now to be checked
Three times a year on my visits here up North;
I give a quick cursory glance but yet I file them
In perfect order, like he did all those long years.
I fish though other stuff, like application forms
For planning when we had the alterations done
And earlier ones when grandma moved into her flat
That was created when they simply split in two
The house she rented out for years to tenants
So she could keep the ground floor for herself.
I found the faded wills of sundry relatives
Who had left their bequests split into shares,
With yet more bills and out-of date guarantees
For items long since dumped into the dustbin.
Though mother would have jettisoned the lot,
I kept some stuff, though, for my memories.
She seems to be de-nesting, to pre-empt,
Perhaps, that time that seems still far away
When she is forced to flit the family home
Just like her elder sister did a year ago.
But I complain that chucking out the stuff
Is stolen history that robs me of my childhood
If photographs of holidays long past go in the bin.
And so I make a secret store squirreled away:
Things I will look back at some distant day
When I myself am old like mother is.
But who will sift my stuff when I am gone?
My niece and nephew might eschew all trace
Of sentimentality that grips me now, I’m sure.
So should I start de-nesting, just like my mother
To save the others all the hassle of the task?