Stuff You

You haven’t yet realised, in your ignorance of life, beauty (and grammar) that the owners of what you so dismissively call Stuff have begun to take yours. Your precious iPhone 8, your £445.00 Balenciaga black trainers and that bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal you were planning to open for your girlfriend. The Dead Peoples, as you call them, have taken them.

And they will continue to take everything you hold dear until you learn some respect (and, some of them say, until you learn better English). They laughed when they saw your sign because they know better than any living person that Stuff is exactly the right word. You can’t take anything with you when you die: in the end it is all Stuff. But they want you to understand that while they lived their Stuff mattered to them just as much as yours matters to you, now.

Remember the piece of creased paper you took from that faded floral dress and threw away? Well Rose, the owner of the dress, would like you to know that you tore up a finger painting she’d kept for sixty years. A finger painting of a rose made for her by her daughter, the daughter who didn’t live beyond her fourth birthday.

So you see? All kinds of Stuff has value. And Dead Peoples Stuff should be respected by the living. Because different people value different Stuff. Including Dead Peoples.

The Dead Peoples will continue to take what you hold dear, what you value; they will continue to, they tell me, Stuff You, until you understand the value of Stuff. (And, some say, until you can produce better signs.)