If You Lost Everything, What Would You Replace?

So, last night I was pondering the tragedy in the South and how it has affected my friends. Some have lost nothing. Some have lost everything. Some are somewhere in between. In conversations with PW and El, I’ve been intrigued by the things they’ve mentioned being upset about having lost and the things they plan to replace. They’re answers are quite different.

I don’t know why but last night it occurred to me to think about what I would replace if I were in their position, if I had lost all my possessions. It’s an interesting mental exercise. Obviously, you can’t replace old family photos, etc. There’s a number of things in my home that are irreplaceable, but then there’s quite a bit that’s just material possessions I’ve collected.

I took a bunch of books — rare, no longer in print kind of books and a few other collectibles like a copy of a radio broadcast of Star Wars and put them in the care packages for El and PW. They’re things that I know they’ve lost that I know they collected too…for some reason, I’d been holding on to these things because I knew they were collectible but I guess they weren’t important to me.

I’ve even thought of asking PW if she wants my VHS A-Team tapes. I’d basically copied them from hers after she’d recorded them. Last year when she got Battlestar Galactica on DVD for her birthday, she mailed me her VHS tapes that she’d copied off of SciFi channel. I’ll be sure to offer her those too. To be honest, they’re not important to me. I mean, I didn’t take the time to carefully copy them all in order off of the television; she did.

They’re just things to me.

Strangely, I’m a collector of many things — stuffed animals, books, fairy art, fairy figurines, turtle figurines, cat/tiger figurines, glass bottles, candles, candle holders, clothes, kitchenware…but thinking about it last night, I wondered what of these collections I would make the effort to replace if I lost it all. The list is pretty short, I guess.

I’d replace my Ruth Thompson prints. I’d replace the necessities like clothes. I’d replace my Pampered Chef kitchenware and my amber jewelry. I might replace my fairy figurines.

The rest is just stuff I have now.

So, my question for you to think about is: If you lost everything, what matters enough for you to make the effort to replace?

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