The Things We Keep
Memory, mortality, and traveling light
I’m packing again. Fifth move in six years. This time I’m cutting it down to the essentials.
As I sort through boxes, I keep asking myself what actually makes a person. Is it the photo albums? The journals? The memorabilia we drag from house to house as proof that we were here? At the end of it, we are bone and flesh and breath. Then dust.
I’ve always found a strange peace in morbid thoughts. I know it seems counterintuitive to my cheerful, positive persona, but I think it’s a central part of who I am. I feel like most humans avoid the idea of death with every fiber of their being, as if not admitting that it’s inevitable will somehow delay its arrival. Yet death comes for all of us: our loved ones, our cherished animals, our partners, our parents, ourselves. Its timing is uncertain and completely unavoidable, and while we can stay as healthy as possible, we can still be struck down at any moment without cause. For me, there is a pure beauty in this. This life of mine is so small and so precious. The reminder of the inevitable becomes a daily motivation to do what I want.
The embarrassment from when you were 25 loses its grip. The failed attempts, the bad relationships, the job you didn’t take. None of it carries the weight we give it. We are all moving toward the same exit at different speeds. Will stories be sung for centuries about how you let that guy take advantage of you when you should have told him to go pound sand? Will novels be written and passed down about the offer you didn’t take or the move you made? I sift through my things and look at these markers of time. Things that mattered so greatly and now not at all. Things that seemed insignificant and now make sense as a core part of who I became.
I opened a big tote box of photo albums yesterday and wondered how many pictures of rocks, flowers, and landscapes I needed. Lots of ex-boyfriends, some I look back on with love and some I honestly didn’t even like that much. A few god-awful trips where only I knew the relationship was over, but I didn’t rally the courage to end it before going on vacation with them. Halloweens when my girlfriend and I drove up to the Castro District and partied. Rock climbing in Joshua Tree. Camping with my sister. Skydiving and all the friends and family that came with it. Childhood photos. Photos of cats, rabbits, dogs, birds, and pets long gone. I’ve carted these heavy albums around as if they would preserve some record of my existence. How silly. Some of these memories mean very little to me, some are dear, some are terrible, and some are magnificent. I pulled the most cherished out and set them aside. The rest are destined for the bin.
I’ve carried around an awful folder of crazy letters my dad sent us after he left. My parents’ divorce wasn’t peaceful, and my dad wasn’t the most stable person. Initially, I took them so my mom wouldn’t have to read them while sorting her own things. Then I kept them out of habit or perhaps some need to preserve the few, albeit strange, things my dad had written to me. Funny enough, the next folder was from when he passed away a few years back and the coroner called saying there was an emergency. I promptly let the coroner know that if they were calling, the emergency had surely passed. I kept a photo of him and me from when I was a child, before everything went sideways. The adult in me knows I can pick and choose what I hold close and what I let go of in so many ways.
If someone laid out my belongings and tried to assemble an image of who I was over 45 years, they’d say I had a lot of athletic equipment, cooking implements, and art supplies. Does this stuff make me myself? Does it matter? The interesting thing is that if this house burned down while I was gone, there is little I would miss or need. Living abroad and moving has taught me to bring my home inside myself: my heart, my mind, my backpack full of what I truly need, my loving partner and his presence. I don’t need much else. My passport, my reading glasses, a laptop, my journal, a few pens I love, a good chef’s knife, Z’s hand in mine.
We hold onto objects out of obligation and habit, as if discarding them erases the person- but it doesn’t. The people who mattered are already integrated into the fabric of my existence. My father’s passion for starting ten tasks and finishing none. My grandfather’s work ethic and warm heart. My grandmother’s sharp tongue and love of fashion. My mother’s wild streak, resilience, and love. My sister and I in a thousand evolving forms. They live in me without a single artifact.
The resounding feeling I have as I sit with the boxes that are left, neatly taped and ready to go, is that I am the same person I have always been. I am the same person I will always be. I see this beautiful arc where I have returned to the good, free, wild, and honest parts of myself and learned to work with them. There were years when the inmates were running the asylum and years when I locked many parts of myself away in a futile attempt to grow up. Now I sit beside my child-self, manning the chariot of wild personas that comprise me, and they all run full speed in the same direction.
I feel light and ready, a boxer in the ring bouncing on her toes, eager to see who I become next.
I hope I honor those who came before me and shine a light for those who come after I’m gone.
As always, thank you for being a part of my life and taking the time to read!
