Easy Sunday: Downsizing at age 91

We put off "downsizing," the move from the larger home where we lived for some years, to a smaller, easier-to-manage place.  It is a rite-of-passage milestone for people lucky enough to live into old age.

Downsizing means abandoning some of the objects that trigger our memories.

Downsizing means saying goodbye, again and again.

Downsizing means being realistic at a moment when our minds are sentimental. That stuff is our stuff, our lives, our memories. The kids don't want it. It is precious to us; junk to them. And there is so much of it.

Tam Moore has been a television and print journalist since he was in college at Oregon State University over 70 years ago. He has been doing good public-spirited things throughout his adult life: a Vietnam veteran, a TV news reporter and anchor, an elected county commissioner, a print reporter on agricultural issues, and a volunteer irrigation repair person at a Southern Oregon Historical Society's Hanley Farm. He has also read my posts and identified typos, bad grammar, and other errors for me to fix, doing so in the early mornings nearly every day for most of a decade so far. 

He has read and edited the eight or nine guest posts I have published on other people's downsizing experience. Now it was his turn. At age 91, he has been the longest holdout.

Tam Moore at 90

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Time flies as we age. I'm sitting with my laptop open as three movers pack up a downsized home, while my wife Barbara and her daughter are already at our new senior living facility three miles away, arranging plants and other items taken by car.

The movers just packed up most of our home office. It took me all of yesterday to take down the complex computer network and remove from the walls mementos from times past which seemed like yesterday. Tucked in the back of a desk shelf full of USB drives and camera memory cards, there was a wedding picture—taken by my boss at the time—of the 1958 marriage to my first wife, Ann. On the wall, a bronze star medal awarded after a 1966-67 tour in Vietnam. Alongside, a National Association of Agricultural Journalists' plaque for the team journalism project which Capital Press earned in 2006.

Time really flew after Ann died in early 2011 and I fell in love with a recent widow after dates to hear band music in the park and orchestral music at the Jacksonville Britt Music Festival. When we decided to get married, a friend who counseled us said we had to decide; her house, my house, or something new. We settled on her house, and downsized a bit.

Now 14 years later, our house awaits. Major downsizing.

Our storage locker: We have more downsizing to do.

Also unfolding, memories; on the top of a box not sorted after my mother died was a cancelled envelope dated 1906, with a one cent first-class postage stamp attached. Nowadays first class is 78 cents and a raise is due soon. Barb discovered a picture of her mom and dad, taken before World War II, and searched images of class pictures taken during the war years.

Then came the scrapbook Mrs. Merryman assembled for my first grade at Harding School in Corvallis, Oregon -- and I promptly remembered writing the school's Christmas play that year but missing the performance, home sick on the couch with swollen throat glands. I did get to be part of the spring play, and two of the three of us in the scrapbook picture are still alive at age 91 going on 92.

I'm wrapping this up the day after the move. Barbara is unpacking things. I'm writing the coda before setting out to the old house to pick up things missed by the movers and take back stuff for the pending estate sale. The memories remain.

And trust me, time flies faster as we age.

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