WHY DO WE KEEP THINGS?

I am one of those really sentimental people. I always have been. I tear up at good memories, sometimes at the most unexpected moments, and I become emotionally attached to things that, objectively speaking, aren't really worth very much.

Admittedly, I sometimes take it a bit too far. I've held onto some ridiculous stuff, even receipts from shopping trips with my daughters over the years. At one point I think I had about 75 ticket stubs from movies I saw with them ages ago. To this day when Arthur and I travel I'll pick up those brochures in hotel lobbies and maps from tourist attractions and keep them way too long, just to hold onto the memories a little more tightly.

Each one of them feels like a little reminder of something we did together, somewhere we had been, or some moment I wasn't quite ready to let go.

Just to set the record straight, I'm no hoarder. Eventually, that kind of thing finds its way to the trash. Drawers need cleaning out and I can generally bring myself to do it. But there are other things I have kept, and probably always will. I suspect most of us have our own versions of them.

My younger daughter—now expecting—is about to celebrate her first wedding anniversary, and I am still living off the memories of that day. Without exaggeration, it was the happiest continuous and uninterrupted day of my life. I've absolutely experienced equally happy moments, but never so many hours of unbroken joy.

I danced with both of my girls that day (they'll always be my girls), and I was on top of the world. I jumped around with my grandchildren. I laughed, smiled, and visited with people I care for—dear friends and even members of my former wife's family whom I rarely get to see anymore. And, of course, I cried beneath the chuppah. I was overwhelmed with happiness that my daughter had found such a wonderful man with whom to share her life.

And then there was that ring.

Before the ceremony, my daughter showed me a little piece of costume jewelry that my mother, of blessed memory, had given her when she was a child. I hadn't seen it in years, but she had kept it all that time and was now bringing it to her chuppah, a small reminder of her grandmother. It was an emotional moment for both of us.

When the wedding was over, I put the suit and tie I'd worn in the back of the den closet. The suit doesn't really fit anymore (I still had twenty pounds to my goal!) but I can't imagine ever parting with it. It may just be an ill-fitting suit, but whenever I see it, I remember that extraordinary day.

I save the things that most people do: old photographs, videos, and cards. I also have an answering machine recording in my daughters' young voices: "This is 305-555-5721...blah, blah, blah...BEEP!" And somewhere in my computer are highlights of some texts I exchanged with those little girls who have long since grown into adulthood.

I think that's part of what makes memory so remarkable. I adore my daughters as they are today, but I also love, and sometimes miss, the four-year-old, the eight-year-old, and the eighteen-year-old versions of them. Through the happy and the sad and the sometimes very challenging, these pictures, messages, cards, and recordings bring those days close to me again. Who they once were has not disappeared from my life.

Three years ago this month, I visited my mother in Florida for what turned out to be the last time. She was living in memory care and could no longer speak. Throughout most of our visit I wasn't even sure she recognized me.

I brought my laptop, filled with digitized home movies of her and my children going back to their earliest years. As I played them for her, I believed I was seeing some kind of flicker of recognition. But in truth, I couldn't know what she was thinking or what memories, if any, she could still reach.

It was heartbreaking to realize that so much of the life we had shared might now be inaccessible to her.

But those memories hadn't disappeared. I still had them. My daughters had them. And two years after my mother's death, there was that little ring, carried to a wedding chuppah by a granddaughter who wanted to keep her grandmother's presence near.

In Judaism, we speak often of l'dor va-dor, from generation to generation. We usually associate it with passing along traditions, values, and a sense of Jewish identity. But perhaps it also describes something as ordinary as a grandmother giving a child a little ring, a daughter keeping it for years, and a family remembering someone who is no longer here.

There is nothing unusual about any of this. Almost all of us keep things that connect us to people we love, whether they are still very much part of our lives or are long since gone. We do this because they can remind us of the people who mean everything to us.

Of course, none of these things can bring back the past. But sometimes a photograph, an old ring, or even a suit hanging in the closet can stir memories so vivid that I feel close to those people and moments all over again.

And sometimes the tears come, too.

That's why we keep things.