There’s an old saying...
“You never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.”
Which is true. Mostly because that would be deeply alarming.
Imagine driving to a funeral and seeing a tiny orange trailer bouncing behind the hearse like somebody still had a few last-minute errands to run. “Sorry for your loss. Also… we need to stop at Storage King.”
And yet, if we’re being honest, most of us live like that tiny trailer is absolutely making the trip. We spend decades collecting things.
Protecting things. Organizing things. Moving things from one garage to another slightly larger garage. We buy storage bins to hold the things that no longer fit in the first storage bins.
At this point, every American household contains...three dead batteries, seven mystery charging cords, and at least one key nobody recognizes but nobody has the emotional strength to throw away.
I know this because a woman three houses over died last winter. I didn’t know her deeply.
We had the kind of suburban friendship where you wave while dragging garbage cans to the curb and occasionally discuss weather patterns like unpaid local meteorologists.
She wore slippers.
Loved her flowers.
Spoke to the neighborhood animals with genuine conviction.
And about a week after she passed away, her family carried her life into the driveway.
Tables. Golf clubs. Lamps. Coffee mugs. Lots of mugs...
Old jackets. Boxes labeled:
“Important.”
“Very Important.”
And somehow…
“Misc.”
Which honestly feels like a decent summary of adulthood. And extension cords. So many extension cords. The woman apparently believed one day the entire neighborhood would need to plug something in from very far away.
I stood there drinking my badly made coffee (by me) while strangers placed price stickers on the pieces of a human life.
One guy picked up a snow shovel and asked...“Think she’d take two dollars?”
And for some reason, that request hit me hard. Because the neighbor couldn’t take any of it with her.
Not the garden tools. Not the recliner. Not the garage shelves. Not the carefully sorted screws in tiny plastic drawers.
All the things we spend years maintaining and protecting eventually become...
“Fifty cents or best offer.”
And strangely enough…that didn’t make me sad. It made me pay attention just a little bit more. Because nobody standing in that driveway talked about the woman’s possessions.
They talked about how she made cakes for older neighbors before sunrise.
How she carried dog treats in her pocket.
How she drove her husband everywhere after his eyesight got bad.
How she waved at every kid who rode past on a bike.
That’s what survived her. Not the stuff.
The love.
And I think that’s the part we forget while we’re busy filling closets and garages and Amazon carts at 11:50 p.m. because apparently one more kitchen gadget will finally heal us emotionally.
The things that last are almost never things.
They’re moments. Moments of Kindness, Attention, Generosity, Presence.
The friend who answers the phone late at night. The teacher who stayed after school. The neighbor who quietly helped people without announcing it online first.
That’s the legacy. Not our furniture.
Nobody gathers after a funeral saying... “He had unbelievable patio seating.”
They remember how you made them feel. And maybe that’s why the older I get, the more sacred ordinary things become.
Hearing Erin laugh (hopefully at my jokes) from another room. My daughters retelling stories I’ve already heard, but listening anyway because one day I’ll miss hearing them. The dogs greeting me like I survived a military deployment instead of a trip to Stop and Shop...Geese overhead sounding like rusty bicycle horns from heaven.
None of it looks important while it’s happening because life disguises itself as ordinary. Until one day you realize it was the whole thing.
So no… You never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.
Because none of it comes with us. But love does strange things.
It lingers...
Love echoes as it leaves fingerprints on people long after we’re gone.
And maybe the real goal was never to accumulate the most before we die.
Maybe it was simply to leave behind the most light.
“For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.”
-1 Timothy 6:7
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