What will I leave when I’m gone?

When your collections are collecting dust, how will you be remembered?

Catholic Voices

Evelyn Bence

Published May 19, 2022  US CATHOLIC

The collection and hoarding of bits and pieces is basic to all animals, from the squirrel with his nuts . . . to the anthologist with his oddments stored up in his memory.

—Elizabeth Goudge, A Book of Comfort: An Anthology

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I am sitting in a church basement, surrounded by the remnants of a man’s life, the 250 cartons of books he abandoned when he crossed the bar. An academic antiquarian library has skimmed off an additional 50.

The collecting had gotten out of hand—three copies of Saint-Watching by Phyllis McGinley and four of the oddball Boxelder Bug Variations by Bill Holm. The books are uncategorized, an art museum catalog next to a hymnbook next to a Shūsaku Endō novel alongside a Wendell Berry rumination then a William Morris biography nestled against a calligraphy instruction manual. I’ve pulled out a hundred lavishly illustrated children’s books. Bought for whom? There were no younguns in his sphere.

https://uscatholic.org/articles/202205/what-will-i-leave-when-im-gone/