Quite a bit has happened since my original blog Cuartito in 2020. First, my father passed in November 2022 and if you are familiar with my previous blog called The Cuartito, you will know that this was my father’s storage shed as well as his version of a man cave. That was his space that contained items that we did not have room for in the house as well as items that he had collected over the years. Many times, I found myself looking inside and wondering where most of these things came from and why he was keeping them. I am sure he had his reasons and I had to respect his area and not question him about it. Through the past years of living with my parents and caring for them, I would gradually begin to eliminate a few small things without him knowing and would also ask him what things he was willing to part with. I would often call Goodwill or Salvation Army to come pick up our donations. After a while, he got used to it and it gave him an excuse to hang out in his shed and rearrange it which consisted of him just moving the items from one end of the shed to the other side. He would even on rare occasions surprise me and ask me to call Goodwill before I had the chance to bring it up first.
Three months after he passed, I began slowly packing his belongings in the house and placing them in the cuartito to begin to sort and see what I was going to donate and what I was going to keep. The moments I would spend in the cuartito would consist of me talking to my father and saying “Seriously?!,” “Why did you keep this?” “We do not even have the thing that goes with this manual anymore!” “What is this dad?”, etc. Because the events that led to his passing came fast and unexpectedly, I had not really processed what had happened and still to this day have not fully dealt with all the emotions, but going into the cuartito is like therapy for me and my time in a way to spend with him.
Over the past year and a half and especially over the last 5 months after my mother’s passing, I have had a chance to pack my mother’s belongings and again place them in the cuartito. Again, I have been going through the therapeutic process of packing, sorting, and organizing items in the cuartito and deciding what to donate and what to keep. I have had a couple of more Goodwill donation pickups since, and I even had a shredding company come and destroy sensitive documents. The space has come a long way and I have had mixed emotions of both feeling productive that I have been able to bring organization to the space, but then I would also have feelings of guilt for going through their belongings and donating items. I often encountered criticism for (in other people’s minds) that I was getting rid of everything too soon. When I had not and only boxed them up and moved them out of the house. I still do have a lot of their belongings in the cuartito organized and secure. Overall, I know it was the right thing to do and I cannot worry about other people’s opinions on whether what I did was right or wrong.
One of the most interesting things that I have encountered through this process is that I have found amazing hidden treasures that my father had kept over the years that have provided glimpses of my father which I did not know. My father was a very private person and kept his thoughts and feelings to himself. Going through the items I found of his just provided me with a little more insight into the things that were sentimental to him and the things he placed the most value on. You learn a lot about a person from the things they keep, and I realize that my father and I were a lot more like than I thought and for that I am grateful.
The World of Dlo 