You Really Can’t Take It With You

By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog:

Published April 17, 2024

According to that redoubtable source of all wisdom and truth, Wikipedia, the Kaufman-Hart Play, You Can’t Take It With You, debuted on Broadway in 1936, ran for 838 performances, and won a Pulitzer. The 1938 film, starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur, won academy awards for Best Picture and Best Director. The probability is that anyone who was ever in the drama club at school at least knows one person who had a part in their school’s production of the play. In it we watch as the scion of a wealthy family falls in love with the daughter from a quirky family, who owns a house that is in the way of a big company’s plans for expansion. In the end, the wealthy clan learns that there is more to life than wealth, power, and acquisition. The outcome is as predictable as the story is charming. Arthur and Stewart make a great team, and no one was better at playing bewilderment than Stewart. The moral of the story is in the title.

Readers of Ecclesiastes, however, already know something of the truth that you can’t take it with you: “As he came from his mother’s womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand” (Eccl 5:15). I have been thinking about that reality lately. At the end of February, my mother died; and afterward, as people do, we sorted through her belongings before the memorial. Some went to the family. Some of it went to the thrift store and to friends. She lived in a two-bedroom apartment, but it was remarkable how much she left behind. It is remarkable how much we all have. Mom was a self-taught writer and painter. In the last years of her life, she was devoted to her painting. We have three of her paintings in our house. She was not much of a photographer (she had a tendency to cut off people’s heads) but she was a great keeper of photos, both digital and printed. Inheriting some of them was a gift. She was the last living link in our family to a world that no longer exists. Those photos are a window into that lost world.

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