Moving, as anyone knows, is one of the top stressors -- along with family death, divorce, or the loss of a job. Having experienced them all, I have often thought that I'd become more practiced, maybe even immune to their emotional toll. But quite the opposite happens; it gets harder. With a Ph.D. in change management, you'd think I would be an expert in this by now.
I've moved so many times, but I always forget to remember what I have learned. You probably already know the organizational to-do list that helps the practical part of the moving process go more smoothly: notifying the post office, bank, doctors, magazines of your new mailing address; coding and labeling boxes; plugging in power cords before furniture arrives; having your computer, television, and music systems set up as soon as you can and outfitting a tool box with hammer, picture hooks, a long tape measure, glue and spackle. Setting up the logistics of a move is vital; it's all you can do.
But there is absolutely nothing to prepare you for the depth of emotions that will snare you. Just as your life flashes by when you are nearly drowning, you will experience deep emotions that arise from memories evoked when a photograph of a lost lover falls from an open box, an expired medicine bottle with an ex-husband's name on it, an art collection begun on your first trip to Europe calling up sudden, nearly forgotten euphoria. Old yearbooks take your breath away as you take the measure your own trajectory, or recall friends remembered or not, teachers unacknowledged. Non-fiction books, which remain even after hundreds have been given away, reflect your sense of past inquiry, and fiction which offers truth and solace, quite the opposite of what you have been taught. Sorting and arranging and trashing and consolidating seem nearly impossible.
Yet these things -- letters, photos, trinkets, which are in themselves worthless to a stranger -- are priceless to us. They are the objective correlative to our lives; they represent what has been lost, the platonic original of something valuable that is now over. These things come back to us as if in a dream -- a million to one shot -- and remind us of what we have held dear in our lives. That's what moving is -- a reminder of love, and that's why it's so bittersweet.