Yeah, but...
... at risk of sounding like an utter arsehole, the link can't have been all that strong, if it was there at all. After all, this is stuff that had been in a loft and then in storage since you were 7 - a period that I'm going to guess is measurable in decades. I'm guessing that in times of hardship, it wasn't the knowledge that there was some mass-produced plastic tat in a box somewhere that got you through. And you've still got the link to your past, on the grounds that you're still the same person.

Is it really the items that matter, or could it be (a) a set of memories and attachments (which have not been lost; that Christmas has gone forever, but for reasons quite aside from the loss of the Ewok village), and/ or (b) the breach of trust (which is not repairable, but which is the sort of thing for which you can get redress via the courts)?

None of this makes the swindler any less of an arsehole, of course.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 11:23, 1 reply)

The Shame
That's what hurts the most. That I wasn't able to look after the 'things' as well my parents did in the short time I was trusted. My own fault.

Yes they are replaceable, not worth a great deal, only moulded plastic (except where I'd glued my talking Action Man's head back on) but she'd treasured them and looked after them, stored them for years in the hope they'd be worth something to me or my bro in later years - and I was careless not looking after them in the same way.
(TheManofScience, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 12:00, closed)

You mean she never bothered throwing them out because she was a lazy slattern.

(comedy bully grrrr, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 12:35, closed)

Trusted on whose behalf?
It's not like you have any obligations to anyone else that you've failed to meet - that'd stand even if the expectation of future value was well-founded, which it ain't.

There was stuff in a loft. Then it was in storage. Then you were preparing to put it into another loft. It doesn't sound like you had all that much of an investment in it anyway. To all intents and purposes, having something doing nothing in a loft is indistiguishable from not having it.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 12:42, closed)

it's the reassurance of knowing it was there, carrying on the memories, doing thing people have done in the past they thought important

Are there other ways? Of course.

Am i still living? to some degree. So the world keeps turning!
(TheManofScience, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 15:08, closed)

What Dr. Dr . said below.
Btw, ignore rory and shambo.
(s0ckpuppet logging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 14:47, closed)