The Hardest Thing I Ever Packed Wasn't a Suitcase

What you have to leave behind emotionally.

I would pack clothes without giving them much thought.

Fold them. Put them in a box. Tape it shut.

But when it came time to pack up my garden tools, I stood there longer than I expected.

My favorite hoe. My tiller. My steel rake. My wheelbarrow.

To anybody else, they probably looked like old tools—things that could be replaced at any hardware store.

But they weren’t just tools to me.

They held years of my life.

I had spent countless hours working with them in my little peach orchard. I called it an orchard, even though it only had six trees. Six trees may not sound like much, but they required plenty of attention.

And I was good at giving it to them.

Those trees were my pride and joy.

I planted them when my children were toddlers. As my children grew, the peach trees grew too. Year after year, I watched them get taller, stronger, and more productive.

By July, I was bragging to everybody about the size of my peaches.

“Look how big my peaches are this year” I would say.

I couldn’t help myself. I was proud of them.

I had nurtured those trees through good years and bad ones. I watched the weather. I worried when something didn’t look right. I waited for the first small peaches to appear and then watched them grow. And my thoughts wandered.

When they finally ripened, I picked more peaches than I could use.

I shared them with other people, along with my grandmother’s recipe for old-fashioned peach crisp. I gave that recipe away countless times, but it always felt like I was sharing more than instructions for a dessert.

I was sharing a little piece of my family.

That is what made packing those garden tools so painful.

I wasn’t only leaving behind my lovely peach orchard. I was leaving behind my old life.

Sometimes, when life got a little rough, I talked to those trees. They never answered me, of course, but somehow I always felt better afterward.

I was leaving behind the woman who walked outside every morning to check on them.

I was leaving behind July peaches, and years of memories tied to that small piece of land.

Nobody tells you that starting over requires this kind of packing.

You don’t only pack what you are taking with you.

You also have to decide what you are willing to leave behind.

Some things won’t fit in a box. They won’t fit in a suitcase, either. They stay buried inside you, and you carry them in a place no one else can see.

I still wonder who takes care of those trees now.

Does someone notice when they need attention? Do they feel proud when the limbs grow heavy with peaches? Do they stand there in July and brag about how big the peaches are?

Does anyone love those six trees the way I did?

Maybe that is one of the hardest parts of leaving a life you built. You have to accept that someone else may step into your place—or that nobody will.

At 76, I understand that starting over isn’t only about where you are going.

It is also about grieving the person you were in the place you are leaving.

I packed my belongings.

I packed my clothes.

I packed up those old garden tools.

But I couldn’t pack the peach trees.

I could only carry the memories of them with me. Every July, I still think about the six peach trees I left behind.

Sometimes, memories are the heaviest things we own.

What have you had to leave behind that other people may not have understood was a loss?

Thanks for reading!

Kindly—Carol