For the last quarter century of his life, my grandfather spent hours each day at his word processor, writing recollections, essays, and articles. He had been a doctor, but like many aging artists and writers, he turned to the page to make sense of the life he had lived.

Every decade, he wrote a new version of his autobiography—hundreds of pages of translucent, onion-skinned remembrance. Some he mailed to me or my mother, but most sat in desk drawers or binders, unread, unappreciated.

When he died, my mother arranged for some of his huge trove to be added to the archives of the Leo Baeck Institute at the Center for Jewish History. Finally, my grandfather found his readers.

My father spent the last decades of his life copying old master paintings in a spare bathroom at the back of his house in Oxford. When he died, my sister Kinny offered the stacks of his canvases to his other relatives. Some refused. Some accepted one or two, begrudgingly, consigning them to the basement or the walls of guest rooms.

When my first wife Patti died, I offered pieces from her collection of unique clothing and jewelry to her friends, her relatives, and ultimately the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul thrift store. A few pieces still reside in my bedside drawer, waiting for Jack’s children to be born.

When my parents-in-law vacated their last house in Phoenix, we held onto some family photos, some Hummel figurines, and a piano. The rest of the contents filled two large dumpsters.

Long before she died in Jerusalem, my grandmother left her garden in Lahore—a paradise of chrysanthemums, frangipani, and roses laid out like a Persian carpet. By the end, she lived far away, her hip broken and her memory mostly gone. The garden, like so much else, belonged to strangers now.

None of what they made—words, paintings, gardens, objects—was meant to last. But in the act of making, they expressed who they were. And so do I.
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At least once a month, I get an email from an aging reader asking what they should do with their accumulation of art and sketchbooks. Some ask if there’s a museum they could bequeath it to. Others say they don’t want to draw anymore, because it will just be a chore for their heirs to bin it all.

I look at my own shelves and shelves of sketchbooks, the boxes of writing in the garage—decades of memories and experiences, experiments and lessons—and I just shrug. Sure, I’ll leave all this behind one day. But it’s not my problem.

I like Swedish Death Planning and the Japanese tradition called shukatsu (終活), or “end-of-life planning”—where people in their 60s begin curating, editing, or even publicly exhibiting their life’s work. Not to preserve it, but to say goodbye to it. Joyfully. On their own terms.

I imagine that when I die, someone—maybe Jenny, or Jack, or even a stranger—will hold onto a sketchbook or two as a souvenir, and then feel crappy and guilty for burning the rest. I hope they don’t.

Maybe I should leave them a note, inserted between my sketchbooks. I’ll say:

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We only get a few decades on this earth, and when we are gone, those who knew us firsthand will soon follow. That’s not sad. It’s life. What we do with those decades is largely our own business.

But if we can provide an example and share our experiences, perhaps we will make a contribution to the generations to come.

I learned more from my grandfather’s example than I ever did from his written words. I learned to enjoy working, to have discipline, and to be resilient. The thought of him at his desk each day, organizing his thoughts and struggling with a sentence, provokes me to do the same.

I don’t own any of my father’s late canvases, but I inherited his pleasure in experimenting, in working and reworking an idea, in setting myself tasks and projects, in making art primarily for me.

Patti’s love of color and creativity, her generosity, and her wit live on and remind me to stay light, be imperfect, and have adventures.

My grandmother’s love of nature, her taste, her attention to detail inspire me more and more as I get older.

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Objects come and go. But the values and lessons we receive from each other—and then get to pass along in turn—those are our real treasures.

Instead of worrying about burdening my heirs with stacks of self-portraits and drawings of my lunch, I keep creating every day, burning through art supplies and paper to make myself a better and happier person, to enjoy my life as much as I can.

I hope whoever has to rent that inevitable dumpster may take that away with them, too.

I drew them for myself.

And in the doing, I became myself.

That was always enough.

Your pal,

Danny

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P.S. If you'd like to start filling up sketchbooks too, check out my new course, Start Your Sketchbook Journal. People tell me they really like it, and you can still get in on the Early Bird price (50% off!) Click here.​