… where the swish of jacket sleeves…
So began my morning’s Proustian moment – one of those small moments when a sound, smell, phrase, sight, or other external stimulus unearths a memory and maybe puts me in a daze. We all have them, or at least I think we do.
This morning, while reading, I “heard” the swish of jacket sleeves in a poem and was reminded of the time I wore a jacket that belonged to a girlfriend’s late husband. I don’t fully remember the circumstances. We were in Philly and walking somewhere, I think to a pub for lunch. Logic says it must have gotten colder and I didn’t have my own jacket. She also wore one of his jackets (I think)… I think there were two – one was a dark blue, the other red or orangish-red.. The memory, only a few years old, isn’t very clear. I know, despite the practicality of the matter (it was cold and here was a jacket that might fit) it still felt a little awkward. In my Proustian daze, I wondered how she felt about it.
My most recent relationship was a long-distance one. On one of her visits, she left a bunch of little notes for me tucked away in books and places where I might one day find them. Sitting next to me on the table is one of those notes. On another visit, or maybe it was one of my visits, or maybe it was a trip we took together, she asked to keep one of my shirts. Sometimes when we talked she would wear it. She said it felt like we were closer.
And context matters, right. A memento in the moment is sweet, but afterwards becomes something different. The object itself doesn’t change, only the relationship to the object does. The shirt still works as a shirt. The jacket still works as a jacket. The note is still a thoughtful bookmark. But they are also larger than their utility.
From the bigger relationships, the ones where lives begin to merge, more gets left behind. From those relationships, the sorting gets a little harder, the purging sometimes requires practical considerations and there are fingerprints everywhere. When I got divorced, the house stayed the same for quite some time and a lot of things were left behind. I spent a few months purging when I got around to it, but I wasn’t about to buy new furniture or remodel – I was living on one salary (a nonprofit salary) and couldn’t afford a full reboot. I eventually redid a few rooms, tore out the carpet, bought some art for the walls…. but a lot of things remained.
When I got engaged, we got rid of more things and changed the decor. When that ended, a different set of furniture had replaced the old furniture and a different set of fingerprints were left behind. I’ve moved twice since then and have carried many of those things with me – mostly out of necessity. I needed a sofa. I liked the new shelving unit. The bench was a nice accent piece. Now, those things are in the garage, waiting in the event that I get my own place again. The more sentimental things, the cards and photos are boxed up with other boxes of cards and photos…
But why?
At the time, I didn’t ask about the jackets or why, three or four years after his passing and after moving across the country, she still had them or why they weren’t boxed up with whatever else she had kept. We accumulate a lot of things in life. Cleaning out is sometimes hard or maybe unnecessary or…? I’ve never been the type who wants to, or has felt the need to, burn my old memories – except for once, when I was younger, I tore up a few photos (which I also still have).
If pressed, I’m not sure I could answer why I still have these things. I don’t look at them. I don’t have pictures set out on display anywhere. Just a few shoe boxes full of memories that seldom get revisited – other than in moments like right now when I’m trying to understand why we carry these things around. I have photo albums from my married life and the big album from our wedding. It seems wrong to get rid of them – as if I’m dishonoring the other person and myself and that part of my life. It also seems silly to hold on to them.
While the Proustian moment had passed pretty quickly, the concept of objects, mementos, and symbols hung with me for most of the day. This has been an interest of mine for a while – mostly because I own so many things that are only partly mine. I went looking for some articles on the psychology behind keepsakes. I didn’t find much. There were articles that recommended getting rid of things as soon as possible, there were others that insisted these were red flags for new relationships, and still others that suggested it’s completely normal… I’ve known people who would fall on various points of the continuum – though I’m not sure I trust the banishment types. To me, getting rid of all evidence of a past seems as… misguided (I don’t want to use the word unhealthy) as holding on to every scrap and building a shrine. Getting rid of physical evidence doesn’t erase history… these people existed, these things happened… I’m not sure we can say we’ve lived if we haven’t left pieces of ourselves in various places.
As I looked for these articles, I stumbled on to the Museum of Broken Relationships. It was/is a pop up museum that collects artifacts from broken relationships and provides commentary on the artifact from the person who had held on to it. I really liked the concept – maybe because it seems like such a cathartic way for people to purge their past with more dignity than the trash heap. The online version of the museum has some strange items: belly button lint, a stiletto, a dildo, a scab… but it also has some really touching items and stories.
I didn’t find much clarity on the “why” we hold on to things. Some psychologists suggest that it’s less about the person or the memory and more about holding on to who we were in that moment. That makes a certain amount of sense. I know I get the occasional reminders from my phone or from Facebook – pictures of people and places in the past. They usually make me smile, and that’s when I remind myself of the Twain quote, “never regret anything that made you smile.” I think part of me imagines that at some distant point in the future when the balance of life has shifted heavily towards remembering and I, too, go in search of lost time, I might look back on the letters and notes and photos with a type of reverie that will still make me smile.