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| Castle Moving Day — but where to? |
Understand, his things are not to be confused with his stuff, of which there is an inexhaustible (and exhausting) supply around the place: entire rooms full of meticulously organized art stuff (paints and brushes, card stock, hooks, spools of wire, tacks, posters, spray cans, sketches and cutouts, files on all of his commissions, slides and/or photos of every single one of his images), as well as his vast collection of art books; a small but judiciously curated collection of his beloved '50s sci-fi monster movie posters; boxes of his Famous Monsters magazine collection; monster models, robot toys, Cootie, Slinky, and all the other pop-culture paraphernalia that he loved so much.
And let's not even venture into the video closet!
No, I'm talking about his personal things.
His glasses on the bedroom dresser that he didn't have time to put on that last morning he was here.
His toothbrush and razor, still waiting in the medicine cabinet. His hairbrush in the bathroom drawer that he brought with him all the way from Illinois.
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| What lurks within the (dreaded) video closet? |
His slippers, parked in the bottom cubbyhole of the bedroom dresser he designed, with a vertical row of shelves alongside the drawers, waiting for him to waltz in, kick off his "hard" outside shoes, and slip them on to go work at his art table.
If only.
I've moved out the extra pairs of athletic shoes in various stages of decrepitude, the still-relatively-decent ones for walking in the harbor, and the extra-grody ones to wear while wielding his spray paint cans. But I find myself unable to dislodge his slippers. They are too personal to be brushed aside They belong where they are.
All of his things belong where they are. I still don't have the heart to move any of them. I joke to myself, it's because, you know, DNA. Just in case cloning ever becomes a thing.
Meanwhile, his stuff stands by, silently rebuking my inability to deal with it. It’s not the objects themselves that are the problem. It’s the way I see them. Right now I still view it all as an archive to be preserved, like the re-created Gustav Klimt studio we saw behind glass somewhere in Vienna during the Klimt 150th anniversary celebration.
I am loath to move a single brush or box of hooks for fear of messing up the historical integrity of his workspace.
When my friend Donna Mekis lost her husband, poet Morton Marcus, she was able to ritualize the process of saying goodbye in preparing and cataloguing his effects to go into Special Collections at UCSC.
But so far, no one has offered to build an Aschbacher Museum to preserve all of James’ stuff. And if there were ever to be such a place, it probably shouldn’t be in my house. That is the very definition of living in the past, the surest way to become a museum-piece myself.
It's up to me to find another way of looking at his stuff, some way that I can let go of it without feeling like I’m betraying him, or trampling on his legacy.
If only I could figure out how.
When it happened to me, I came home from the hospital and took all of his clothes out of the closet, bundled them into bags, and donated them the next day. I gathered up all his toiletries and bagged them and took them out to the big can because I knew if I put them in a wastebasket they would just remind me that he wasn't coming back to use them. And yet, nearly 12 years later, I still have some things: ticket stubs from concerts he saw before he met me, stubs from musicals and plays we saw together, his wedding ring. I don't know what to do with them, so I don't do anything. Most of the time, I forget about them. Except for a few pictures, there's nothing of his on display in my house. But I know where his last address book is. And his favourite vinyl albums. And the last card he ever gave me. I still have them. I just don't have him.
ReplyDeleteWhen they gave me his wedding ring in the ICU, I took it home and put it aside the first night for safekeeping. But by the second night, when it was pretty evident he wasn't coming back, I put it on my own finger and I've been wearing it ever since. I threw out his rattiest, paint-stained T shirt and work pants so I could use those hooks behind the bedroom door for my stuff, but most of his other clothes are still in the closet and dresser. I can winnow through those sooner or later, but it's his art studio/office, about 1/3 of the downstairs area, that's so overwhelming!I applaud your rational approach, Roby, and I hope that I will get there too!
ReplyDeleteI think it's still early days. Those things touched by our loved ones in their everyday life are powerful connections. My friend lost her daughter and gave many things that belonged to her daughter to my daughter. Amongst those things was a hairbrush and large photo frame. I still don't understand how she gave those up, and very soon after she lost her daughter. But that was her way of living through grief and moving forward if that is even possible when you lose a child. I still have baskets of my mother's things 15 years after her death. I am beginning to think about getting rid of these things, stuffed animals and whatnot, because now I am getting older and care less about things in general. You really can't take it with you and you will know when it is time to let them go.
ReplyDeleteI have things that belonged to my mother, too, including things she inherited from her father, my grandfather. Stuff begets stuff! But the stuff-buck stops here. I don't have any kids to pass this stuff along to!
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