Loss by Attrition

I just did a bit of spring cleaning (I know, I'm late) and decided to donate a small brass mirror to the local thrift shop. Not a big deal, I know. Except that it was Jeanne's. Jeanne, for those who don't know, was my mom's sister and best friend and my godmother, aunt, mentor and very close friend (and a sister and aunt and friend to many of the folks who read this blog) who died of breast cancer in 1990. (I promise this is not an entry about breast cancer.)

When Jeanne first died and we went through her belongings, I took quite a bit of her stuff: clothes I thought I might wear, a couple of favorite pieces of jewelry, some decorative items, some kitchen stuff--I was in college at the time and moving into an apartment and so any kind of kitchen stuff was welcome--and even some makeup.

But that was in 1990. And I've moved...let me count...9 times since then. (No, I'm not kidding. I just counted.) And with each move--moves being the times when you really look at your belongings and ask the question, "Do I need this?" (or, more specifically, "Would I rather pack this or toss this?")--I've let a couple of things go. In the early years, it was some of the clothes that I quickly realized I would never wear and some of the kitchen stuff--whenever I move I always get the urge to upgrade my kitchen stuff. (Oddly, I held onto the makeup--though I never used it--longer than was reasonable or even sanitary.)

In more recent years, there have been some other things of no inherent sentimental value, but which had become sentimental because I'd held onto them for so long. Like a cheap makeup mirror in a plastic frame (one of those mirrors that shows your normal reflection on one side and a magnified reflection--which I NEVER use, regular is scary enough, thank you--on the other). At first the plastic frame was chipped. Then it was cracked. And then more cracked. And I never used it anyway. In our last apartment, it sat up on top of the wall cabinet and collected dust. When we moved last year, I finally took a good, long, hard look at it and realized it was a purchase Jeanne had probably made with little thought or care. If she had been alive, she likely would have tossed it or replaced it several times over the SIXTEEN YEARS I had hung onto it as if it were a precious (ok, neglected) family heirloom. And so I tossed it. But--irrational though this is--it made me a little bit sad. Because it's one less thing in my life that was hers.

And so each time I assess a bit of the flotsam or jetsam from her life that's been woven into mine, I find myself asking the ridiculously hard question: do I keep it because it was hers, or do I acknowledge that even she wouldn't have kept it this long? Does it really honor her memory to save a drugstore mirror? Or even a brass one?

The rational part of my brain says no. Moreover, it says they're not even "hers" anymore. In most cases, I've now owned them far longer than she did. But another part of me feels it as a loss. A diminution of the things circulating in the world of the people who loved her who value them for that reason: because they were hers. And so, in a way, less of her circulating in our world.

Loss by attrition.


Postscript:
As I've been writing this, I've been trying to remember what other items of hers I still have. It's harder than you'd think because, as evidenced above, some of the things are really mundane items that have been woven into my life. So, without further ado, here's my running list. I still have:
- her brown leather jacket that I still wear although it's starting to fall apart
- her explosion ring (my first Joan Michlin piece)
- a brass box filled with her business cards advertising her services as a Certified Hypnotherapist and MariEl healer
- a framed print that I adore, but that needs to be re-framed because the glass was broken in the last move
- a black shawl that I keep at work
- a bamboo footstool
- a rattan storage cube
- a wooden jewelry box inlaid w/brass
- a small, velvet-lined wood box
- a mounted photo she took of fishing boats in Provincetown
- a couple of her drawings
- some of her books
- a garlic press