A big part of my father’s identity was music.When he died, he left over 20 stringed instruments. Mostly guitars, a couple of basses, two ukes, and a banjo. Of course, since he was unmarried and I’m an only child, the care of these instruments was left to me, just like everything else was.

I’ve been paying every month to keep all of his things in a storage space. It’s been draining me financially. I’ve been using some of the life insurance money to pay for the space because I have no other source of income and I can’t imagine having to give up his things.

I flew into town for Labor Day weekend to try to pare down the storage space and see if I could move to a smaller one so I could pay less rent. Part of that was taking the guitars to get appraised.

I had sixteen informally appraised. I had to put the guitars in my mother’s car, we drove to a guitar shop that, once I got inside, I realized I’d spent time in with my Dad before. It’s actually where I bought my guitar strap after I got an acoustic model for Christmas.

Anyway, everything was appraised, then I casually asked if there was anything that the store was interested in buying, and they said yes, and the one they said yes to meant that I could pay the storage space and my cell phone bill for a month without dipping into my savings so in a snap decision, I went for it.

It wasn’t until later that I realized I didn’t have a picture of the guitar. I had to Google it from the appraisal list to even realize what I sold. I feel like my Dad might have been a little disappointed about how quickly I traded something he loved for the practicality of paying utilities for a month.

But, really, it’s just one guitar. I’ve given two to my cousin, I’m keeping my Christmas present one and a bass that my Dad used to play in high school. I still have lots of instruments to figure out what to do with. More than I need.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here. I guess what I’m struggling with is the sentimental attachment to all of his things and the tension of that against my current financial situation. I can’t keep everything in storage forever. There is a theoretical limit. But now that I regret selling something so quickly, I feel a little gunshy about selling anything else.