Last week I wrote about the burden that my youngest son, Lindell, carried as he cleaned out his room. Through the years, his older brothers had also cleaned out their rooms, but they never had to say goodbye to their childhood toys, books and clothes because they weren’t going far — just up to Lindell’s room. Slowly, Lindell’s room became the catchall for everyone else’s childhood.

We successfully cleaned Lindell’s room, carting boxes of old toys to Goodwill, and we even painted over the babyish yellow walls with a fresh coat of royal blue. Later, however, I was still left with a small pile of things that no one — including myself — could part with.

These were the button-up cowboy pajamas Owen used to wear; Ford’s favorite stuffed puppy, Rocket; and the Lion costume Lindell wore at his brothers’ baseball games and called himself the mascot. It was Owen’s first pair of sneakers and Ford’s Star Wars action figures. And it was the stuffed bear Lindell earned in kindergarten for going to school a full week without crying.

They lay in a pile on my bedroom floor like relics from the past. Even my boys don’t remember these past versions of themselves, the little boys who played with Rocket or wore cowboy pajamas. But for me, picking up each of the items was like embarking on time travel.

I can still remember a time when a whole room in our house was overflowing with orange, yellow and red plastic toys, children’s books and the tiniest clothes you can imagine. I hated and loved that room. I nagged about cleaning it often. Today, the bulk of those toys are gone. They’ve been sold at garage sales or hauled to Goodwill. Just the sentimental ones remain.

Now that entire room has been condensed into a small pile on my bedroom floor. Eventually, the pile would fit into a box in the attic.

But why these items, I wondered. Why the cowboy pajamas or the book about a cow that wears different colored underwear? It’s funny how through each stage of our life, hundreds of moments and memories are filtered down to a few select items.

The next week after cleaning Lindell’s room, Ford asked me about all the rings on my fingers. I wear five of them. My engagement ring, wedding ring and anniversary ring are on my left hand; a thick wedding band and a thin gold wedding band are on my right hand.

Ford knew that the thick wedding band is my husband Dustin’s. He lost it in a lake in northern Maine right before he deployed in 2011. A year later, after we’d already bought Dustin a replacement, a father-and-son diving team found the ring at the bottom of the lake and returned it to me. But the gold band is new. It belonged to my grandmother, Doris, who passed away earlier this year.

Doris had been a widow for 15 years. My grandfather, Big Jack, died when I was pregnant with Ford. Soon after, Doris sold her house, which had been like a second home to me, and moved into a retirement apartment.

Many of the things I remembered about Doris’ house could not go with her. I remembered the red carpet that went up the front stairs, the blue-and-white checkered kitchen floor, the oval mirror in the hallway, and the wallpaper in the guest bathroom that had Revolutionary War scenes on it. They reminded me of my brothers chasing me up the stairs and Big Jack taking a picture of a picture in the oval mirror. But they had to stay. Instead, Doris took the smaller things, like the three ceramic canisters that sat on her coffee table.

One of the first times I visited Doris in her new apartment was when the boys and I were escaping a hurricane in Florida. We lived with Doris in her apartment for two weeks, and just by the little relics here and there, like the canisters, it was still very much her home. Just condensed.

Later, when Doris moved to assisted living, her belongings were filtered even more. Slowly through the years as she aged, her entire life was condensed to fit smaller surroundings.

When she died, I wanted two things: one of those ceramic canisters and her wedding band. I would have wanted the red carpet and oval mirror, too, but some things can’t be brought along. My entire 39 years with her are held in a thin gold ring on my right hand.

It was the same with my boys’ pile of childhood toys. I’d like to keep their whole childhoods with me — forever. But I can’t. Instead, I have these small relics — a stuffed animal, a book, a pair of shoes — to remember the bigger moments.

I packed the pile away, knowing full well that I was not done. The attic is just a holding pattern, like Lindell’s room was for his brothers’ things. Someday, we’ll have to condense again, and I wonder which items will eventually hold up.