|
|
| |
Title: Auld Lang Syne Posted: 8/12/2004 |
|
| |
She sorted through her closet every December, much in the way that her mother had always attended weekly mass. The unexamined life was not worth living, Socrates once said, so she separated it into piles—some neat, some scattered, all of them open to scrutiny. She combed through the basics first, blankets and clothes. Deciding which sweater should stay and pants should go was far easier than tackling her mementos. The past was like a foreign country that both attracted and repelled her. She had to visit the people she once loved and the person she used to be, but it was never as simple as ‘stay or go’. She kept her mementos in shoeboxes, and each box belonged to a person, a time, occasionally a place. Over the years, she’d realized that keeping them discreet was as important as keeping them at all. Their separation guaranteed she’d never forget what belonged to whom, and never forget those whom she was struggling to keep in her memory. First she reached for the box full of her childhood drawings. Most were folded into quarters, crayon on newsprint. She’d meant to put them in an album, but had never found the time. Crammed in along one side was a vellum envelope full of old stamps. The prizes of the collection were handed down—perhaps by her father, or maybe by an uncle, she wasn’t sure. She’d spent ages seven to nine dreaming that if she looked hard enough, she’d find that Dag Hammerskjold stamp—the one with the inverted background—hidden in her grandmother’s garage. She perused another box, overflowing with letters to friends whose faces she barely recalled, then another one, heavy with rocks and shells. She’d collected those during the summer when she and her mother had driven down the coast. Had she been able to keep Dora, she would have given her boxes like these, just as Creegan had done for his daughters. Even Samantha and Lily had their boxes of memories. Her mother’s was half-empty, a shadow of the others. It contained three letters and twenty or so unused postcards. She ran her finger across their glossy surface. She’d loved these as a child because they preserved a San Francisco she’d never seen, one full of classic cars and manicured lawns. Berkeley’s zip code was the number two. There was her mother’s rosary, too. As she let it fall from its velvet bag, the color of its dark red beads popped against her pale skin. Like the urgency in her grandmother’s eyes when her wrinkled hands had offered this gift, the luminescent beauty of the beads had stayed with her far longer than her faith in the church. As a child, she’d believed that counting beads would solve her problems, and for a child’s meager troubles, they’d done wonders. Even in the face of her mother’s death, they’d offered her a solace not found in sympathy cards and condolences. While the question of what to do with young Susan loomed large, she’d clung to the beads and prayed the rosary just as her mother had taught her. She let it slip through her fingers back to its sack. Next was Michael’s box. While she didn’t have a choice about losing him, she’d willingly given most of his belongings to his mother, for whom the tangible effects could offer some comfort. His mother had never stared into his lifeless eyes or watched his blood cloud the bathwater. The only solace Branca had found was in making his absence complete. Still, she did keep a few things: the wedding bands that they had chosen, the first picture she’d ever taken of him, the watch that used to grace his wrist. He’d take it off and run the links between his fingers when he was anxious. The night he died she’d found it on the bathroom sink—she took it as a sign that he'd gone without fear. She slid it on, then off, like a child might her mother’s shoes. She rubbed the links before returning it to the box and putting the lid in place. She didn’t need rings or a watch to remind her of Michael. She had a knot in her stomach every time she passed a church and didn’t go in. She hadn’t confessed in three years, and not because she didn’t know the words. Creegan had claimed that death was the illusion. Still, it wasn’t death that haunted her, it was a familiar tempest of guilt and regret. Death might be the illusion, but the objects left behind were as real as her obligations to the people she had loved. She didn’t have a box for Creegan. Then again, she had so little of him—no letters, no pictures taken in light so dim that history bled into memory. All she had of him were intangibles—fleeting moments, words spoken in haste, tender gestures preserved only in her mind’s eye. He was present, not past, but she’d reserved a space for him with the others. As she pushed the boxes to the back of the shelf, the rings clinked against the watch and the rosary beads rustled gently, begging for just one moment more. She took a deep breath, then closed the door. Out with the old, in with the new. -fin-
|
|
| |
Send Feedback!
|
|