Keepsakes & Grief

I have always kept hold of keepsakes- maybe you are the same? It began with stones and shells like most kids, and then developed into tokens from adventures, boys I fancied, notes passed in class. These objects were important to me, the same as any teenage diary. They represented rites of passage or terrible heartbreak, but they were mine, for me to rediscover again and again. So often I would examine them, heart pour over them, dive into them for melancholy and nostalgia, to cry and laugh.

These objects were evidence that I had lived.

Then, every so often I would have great, big fits of energy and declare I needed to clear my room. Some of these talismans would be discarded, others continuing the burden of historical sentiment.

The living ultimately ends up adopting all this stuff. We inherit loved one’s material possessions and the responsibility of whether we keep them or clear them.

In death though, these things become passive and quiet. Books no longer being heaved off shelves become slow and sad. These objects adopt a kind of static energy instead. They die too. Except they don’t- they carry the energy of the holder and at times I felt I was betraying my mother when I opened cupboards and boxes of keep sakes.  In many ways I felt lucky to feel my parents in the fabric of their school reports, but in others overwhelmed by the stacks of blueprint photographs and albums documenting their life before my sisters and I.

The deceased leave us gift and burden: The choice to keep, and in keeping somehow honour them or throw out (quickly)- in case those invisible eyes are disappointed. At first I felt this obligation to preserve on behalf of my parents their life. Knowing everything going in that black bin liner was eradicating more physical evidence of their existence.

The thing that made me cry the most was a list my mum wrote with all the places she wanted to travel, all the things she wanted to do, and at the bottom, “clear house out”.