Here's this week's Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper.

The meaning of things has been much on Smartmom’s mind of late.
Since Groovy Grandpa’s death last September, Smartmom, Diaper Diva and
their stepmother, MiMa Cat, have been going through his things and
struggling to decide out what to keep and what to give away.

The process is wrenching, but necessary. For Smartmom, there are
memories sewn into every one of his cashmere sweaters, his Ralph Lauren
polo shirts, his Perry Ellis suits. Needless to say, Groovy Grandpa was
a snappy dresser, and a random item of clothing can evoke a birthday
dinner at Po, a weekend at his country house, or a trip to Belmont, a
Racing Form under his arm.

She could even smell her father on some of his clothing, and that
gave her pleasure, but also made her immeasurably sad. No wonder grief
experts caution the importance of waiting until you’re ready before
going through a loved one’s clothing and personal effects.

MiMa Cat found it difficult and upsetting to see the clothing in his
closet every day, so a few months ago, Smartmom and her sister did the
deed. They saved some clothing for Teen Spirit, who loves to wear his
grandfather’s suits and elegant shoes; they gave some to Hepcat, who
loved Groovy Grandpa’s taste in outerwear, and they packed up the rest
for the Housing Works Thrift Shop.

Even now, it gives Smartmom pleasure to see Teen Spirit wearing one
of Groovy Grandpa’s ties, one of his button-down shirts, a pair of his
white bucks or wingtips. And to see Hepcat in one of the Barbour
raincoats that Groovy Grandpa brought back from a trip to Scotland is
special beyond words.

In the back of one of Groovy Grandpa’s closets, Smartmom discovered
boxes and boxes of old jazz 78s that Groovy Grandpa had collected when
he was a teenager living in Los Angeles. Smartmom could just imagine
him, a connoisseur of great music and an inveterate collector, going
from record store to record store in West Hollywood picking out his
favorite music by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Lester
Young and Sidney Bechet, and then dragging them home in a shopping bag.

Smartmom knew that those treasures had traveled from LA to his
college days in Berkeley then cross-country to the city of his birth,
and later across the Brooklyn Bridge to his apartment in the Heights.
Apparently those records meant a lot to him.

Smartmom had a fight with Diaper Diva that day. MiMa Cat didn’t want
the 78s and Diaper Diva wanted to take them to Housing Works then and
there. Smartmom wanted to just leave them in the back of the closet to
delay the inevitable.

“We shouldn’t make any decisions yet about the records,” she told Diaper Diva. “Let’s just wait.”

There are often differences among family members about what to do
with a loved one’s things. Some, like Hepcat, are wildly sentimental
and can’t bear to part with anything from the past. Some are completely
overwhelmed and just want to give it away and sell it.

Some like Smartmom, become paralyzed and find it too difficult to make what feel like irrevocable decisions.

But that day in Groovy Grandpa’s apartment, Diaper Diva was on a
mission. It’s not that she’s unsentimental — it’s just that when she
starts a job, she likes to see it through to the end. Undeniably, there
were tears and ugly words were exchanged through gritted teeth. No fighting, no biting, the twin sisters can launch in and out of a heated argument faster than a speeding bullet. Finally, the sisters reached a
compromise and put the boxes in Diaper Diva’s Volkswagen Passat; they
would decide over the next few days what to do.

Smartmom thought about keeping them, but she has no room in her
too-small apartment, which is teeming with things Hepcat insists on
saving from his past.

In the end, Smartmom and Diaper Diva gave the 78s to a good friend
who has a 78 player in his country house. He promises to take good care
of them and let Smartmom and Diaper Diva come up anytime to listen to
them or take them back if Teen Spirit decides that he wants some of
them.

Smartmom has come to the conclusion that you can’t save everything,
nor would you want to. It’s important to be selective about it and keep
things that will be meaningful to herself and her family.

For Hepcat, she saved the best of her father’s photo books.

For Teen Spirit, she saved all the beat poetry books and the works
of Rimbaud and Verlaine. But also the shoes and the seersucker jackets.

For the Oh So Feisty One, she selected the fussy but gorgeous red
cut glass wineglasses that belonged to her middle namesake, Groovy
Grandpa’s mother, Ethel.

As for Smartmom, she took every single notebook (with his copious
and unfortunately illegible notes about what he was reading) and every
single photograph and slide he ever took, including his interesting
(and secret) art photography that she is a great appreciator of.

As the archivist of her father’s mind, she has also kept all of his
unpublished creative work. Most importantly, a book of poems for
children that he wrote in 1994 called, “Animals You Haven’t Met Yet,”
rhymes about made-up animals like the Aunteater:

He hasn’t any interest

In your uncles or your cousins

But never let him near your aunts

Because he eats them by the dozens.

Words don’t take up a lot of space. But in those wonderful poems
Smartmom has more of her father — his humor and his creativity — than
she could ever hope to keep.