“Memories” of Charlotte, Texas — photo by Billy Hathorn.
It was the Dutch Bros gift card that split me open.
“One small latte,” I said, handing the card to the peppy barista, “but I don’t know if there’s anything on here.”
“Sure, I can check that for you,” she offered, returning with hot coffee and the card. “You have $21.50 left,” she said, smiling.
I drove away near tears.
It wasn’t his wedding ring or wallet that drew me to tears. The photo albums and baby book did. His harmonica, too.
Then the culling got granular: ticket stubs, postcards, pesos, a checkbook balanced in his shaky hand, my mother’s driver’s license that he’d kept after her death. And then a neat, small stack of photos tucked in his dresser drawer, each image showing my parents last years together: traveling to New York, the Grand Canyon, Mexico. A bucket list of desires, check, check, check.
One by one, I put his life in a box, in a bin, in the trash. I was the hand of discarding, closing a life.
* * *
Maybe you know this process. After a death, the ephemera. What to toss, what to keep? Do you hold tight or let go?
Between tears, I’ve tried to be thoughtful and kind but also practical. No one wants the baroque silverware. Thrift stores, glutted with precious “heirlooms,” have stop accepting one man’s treasure. It’s now trash. Literally, actual trash. I am filling the landfill to its brim.
Again and again, I ask: where will I keep so many things, while also knowing the heart can only hold so many memories. Mind space, like closet space, is full. Memories tarnish, fade and often slip away. I don’t know what to do with the stuff of a life, moved and stored and tucked away, from family to family, from death to death, to now me.
These everyday items — a school tablet, a baby book, an old ring, a few coins — seem small individually. And yet, how much does one preserve history, and at some point, is this personal history worth packing up and storing once again, in some other house of some other relative who has lost the thread of the generations before? Does history — these items — require perpetual storage? If the answer is yes, the question is what are we preserving, and why?
* * *
cull
/kəl/
verb
to select from a group; choose
to reduce or control the size of by removal
noun
something rejected as inferior or worthless
* * *
Maybe the process of culling is really the act of cherishing. In sifting through my father’s past, I remember anew with each review. This is, of course, the value of history. The events do not change, but our perceptions do. Maybe the act of attention is enough. To hold briefly, and then release.
May memory make permanent the tenderness of today.
* * *
I wear my father’s jeans. Levis, soft, faded. They are a bit big in the waist, but barely, and too long, but easily cuffed. With each wearing, the denim stretches and bags and I cinch the waist higher, tighter.
It’s weird, I know, and kinda creepy. But in the weeks after my father’s death, the jeans were soft and familiar. And I had unintentionally found a symbol for our relationship: an uneasy, make-do fit in which we craved encouragement and approval.
My desire for my dad’s clothing takes me by surprise. His full and organized closet showed a particular taste. The thrift shop clerk, when handed dozens of colorful shirts, sighed kindly, “Oh,” she said, “older men love their Hawaiian shirts.”
My father never succumbed to sloppy. Perpetually thin, he was lanky and loose, with shoulders back, head up, and a face that would open into a wide smile. Even as he was dying, he showered, shaved, dressed. He would not let anyone see him disheveled.
This is not sentiment of longing.
I am not holding onto his clothes as one would a generational watch or beloved hat. We loved each other as much as we were able, and often it seemed not enough. These clothes, I see now, may be the closest I’ll get.
* * *
cull
To select, reject, discard.
To glance and glance again,
to study and gaze, to weigh and wonder,
to want for a moment. To pause and toss. To let go.
* * *
The last thing to sort — the wallet, thin and spare, a life pared. Credit card. Insurance card. Library card. A coffee card he never had the chance to use.
Our every visit, in every weather, involved coffee. Always a strong hot brew, with cream and chatter. Now, three months from his death, I slip the stiff plastic card into my own wallet.
Throat clenched in memory, hot coffee in hand, I drive away.
“Thanks Dad,” I say, to no one but myself.