Freedom from Attachment

My Mother-in-Law, Jean, died last week after a long slow deterioration.  There was sadness and relief in her finally letting go.  The burdens of life had been set down and whatever is beyond accepted.

Jean spent years letting go of the many things that cluttered the life of a upper-middle class mother and wife.  She gave away many of the things she loved to family and friends.  When she died there was not much left to deal with.  Odds and ends.

My life is buried in the things I own.  The amount of time I spend cleaning and organizing the things of my life comes close to exceeding the times I actually "use" those things.  If I was actually a well organized person rather than a slob, keeping track of my things might take more time than the time I spend putting the things to use.

And it's more than I just using these things for some apparently valued purpose, I have an attachment to these things. I like my things.  I invest some part of myself in my plastic coffee filter holder that I have used for years to make coffee every morning.

How does this happen?  Why is a part of my soul owned by an old copy of Cyrano de Bergerac and my TV remote and a teeny tiny bottle of olive oil I bought in a Paris shop filled with sand I collected from the Egyptian desert?

I don't want freedom from these things.  I'm not sure I agree with Gandhi on this subject.  There is something sacred in some of these things.