They're the possessions that tell your story: the photos of old friends and relatives. The ring your mom left you. The hand-knit Christmas stockings. Your grandfather's secretary desk and the letters inside.
When disasters strike, these artifacts of your own rich history might be the toughest belongings to lose.
“It still hits me now — a picture of my dad that my grandmother painted, which was hanging on the wall by the piano," says Martha Tecca, whose house in Lyme, New Hampshire, burned to the ground 10 years ago. She and her husband had been on a hike, and lost everything but the clothes they were wearing.
“The things that are sort of generational — those are the pieces you feel worst about at the time,” she says.
Of course, lost things are just things. Those who mourn them are conscious that others are suffering far worse from catastrophes, including the wildfires, hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters that have struck with greater intensity in recent years.
Still, these family heirlooms, mementoes and handmade relics are irreplaceable. How do you cope with losing them — and perhaps recapture some of the lost memories?
“Grief is the natural response to loss, whatever that loss is,” says Mary-Frances O’Connor, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona and author of “The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing.” “Objects are often cues for our memory, our habits, for our culture, our social interaction.”
And it takes time, she says, “to understand: What does it mean for our life that this thing is gone?”
There are so many immediate, practical tasks to attend to after a catastrophic event — finding a place to live, filing insurance claims — that it might take a while to really absorb the loss of mementoes.
In Barbara Lambert's case, she gave herself permission to stop searching for everything that might have been lost, reluctant to stir up sadness over things she hadn't looked at in a long time, anyway. Lambert's Larchmont, New York, home was gutted by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in 2021.
She grabbed documents, jewelry and medications as the waters rose around her legs. But the flood destroyed relics like scrapbooks, old Playbills from Broadway shows, ticket stubs and her son’s grade-school art.
“It's very overwhelming, devastating, but you realize what you really need to get through life,” she says.
Jenny Mackenzie's home in Peacham, Vermont, was destroyed along with half her family's belongings in the floods created by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl in 2024. While she was able, over time, to find and restore items like her daughters' stuffed animals in the debris, the toughest loss was a handmade canoe she'd received as a college graduation present. She found it two weeks later in shards along the river.
Were it not for friends and neighbors, she “would have walked away” from the mud-filled house without trying to retrieve much. But dozens of people turned up to help. A neighbor came and dug up what was salvageable of her beloved garden beds, since replanted. Other neighbors spent days rescuing and restoring furniture. Picture “over 60 people shoveling mud and passing our possessions across the river,” she recalls.
Natural disasters often affect entire communities, O’Connor notes, so “this is a shared loss.”
“Our shared response builds meaning, and memorializes,” she says.
Tecca said friends around the country sent photos to help fill the gaps in her collection, unsolicited. One friend got Tecca and her husband new copies of their college diplomas.
“In terms of things, we ended up getting more than we lost,” she said.
Jack Pitney and his wife were at Toys R Us with their toddler when a mudslide slammed into their Glendale, California, house in 2005. They came home to find his playroom buried, and with it, all his toys.
“The only one he had left was in his hand: It was the one we had just bought,” Pitney says. “It was a big deal. For a 2-year-old, there is no such thing as an unimportant toy.”
Friends and colleagues brought toys from their own homes, helping to distract his son from what had happened.
Personal items matter because of the histories behind them, but they’re not the only way to tell those tales.
“The stuff is just a vehicle for the stories,” says Matt Paxton, author of “Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff.” A decluttering expert, he often works with families who struggle to let go of sentimental belongings.
Even those who have just experienced a calamity should still document and hold on to the meaning of what’s lost, he says: “You’re the most raw you’ve ever been right now. But now is the time to record the stories. You don’t need the things for your legacy to live forward.”
Write down the memories and tell them to your kids and friends. Document the heirlooms and their history on apps like Artifcts, he says. Digitize any photos and videos you still might have, and any going forward. Your kids' art? Scan it.
“The oldest story in the book is telling stories and passing them on — that’s why it hurts so much when we lose them,” he says.
While experts recommend digitizing, they acknowledge that a tactile object can evoke a more emotional response.
“Humans are such visual beings, but it’s not our only sense,” says Jennifer Talarico, a psychology professor at Lafayette College. She cites the feel of a souvenir in your hand, the sound of a loved one’s voice on voicemail, the taste of something that takes you back to childhood.
Many items have stories that no one else would understand. Paxton remembers one family that held on to their grandmother’s remote, the one she loved to watch “Jeopardy!” with.
Many survivors found, with time, that not everything from the experience was negative.
“It sounds weird maybe, but there was something in there that was a little bit freeing, free of having all that stuff. Of not knowing what to do with it,” said Lambert.
Going to a new home and acquiring new things marks a transitional moment, Talarico says. It’s OK to mourn, but have faith that you can refill photo albums with new memories.
A disaster, she says, “might be a marker of the before and after, but there is an after.”
The gifts from friends carry tremendous emotional value themselves, says Tecca, who now lives in a different town. There are new stories, of the fire and of rebuilding.
“Every piece in our house at the moment is something someone gave us, or that we intentionally got,” she says. “The things become precious, the things you now fill your house with.”