For several years now, I drive past this house. The occupants have a pretty serious addiction to hoarding. They don’t seem to throw anything out. From the street, you can see a car, a van and a trailer jam-packed full of stuff. Even on the roof racks on top of the vehicles and even under the trailer! There are also more stuff chained to the cars and trailer.

When you look up at the house, it’s just piled high. There is a skinny walkway maybe 40cm wide that heads toward the front door. And on each side of the walkway are more things and stuff to about 1 meter tall. On the front lawn, it must be 2 meters deep of stuff.

To me and other passersby, it all looks like rubbish, recycling or the odd repairable item if you had more time in your life. Basically junk and rubbish. For years I drove past this house watching the pile of junk getting higher and higher. I often wondered how the neighbours thought about it. If they complained of rats or stink.

Last week, the house burned down. It was gutted. It’s now uninhabitable. The roof was gone but a few walls were still standing.

Did the occupants have insurance? Where are they now ? Were any of them injured?

You can just guess that the ‘stuff’ was a terrific accelerator to completely destroy a house. Now the daily existence of the occupants has changed for ever.

I was moved emotionally, from, “Eeeww, look at that. They’ve got a bit of an issue!” to “They must be in a terrible place now, homeless, and loosing all their possessions, including all that rubbish and junk that obviously had some hold over them.”

I celebrate love and the meaning of love in my work. I’m fond of helping people connect. It also occurs to me that grief and loss are parts of life and love. This emotion is not really given much limelight. Often, fellow jewellers make fun, saying, “Oh I’m going to start a hate collection.”
I lost my Mum a couple of months ago. I am grieving. Whilst she was elderly and frail with a series of health problems and the outcome was inevitable and for the best, it doesn’t change anything: I miss her and miss the feeling that she’s there, on my side, no matter what.
There are times in life when change is good or even forced upon us. I’m going to start working on a new collection that embraces times in our lives for starting again, picking ourselves up, honouring the expression of our loss. ‘It’s time to be quiet’, and then ‘It’s time to celebrate the new life’.

Maybe I might even design a divorce ring, a ring to acknowledge grief and a connection to the person we loved.

A start-over ring……. the change collection……