i finished moving the last of my things out of my parents' house today, and standing in my old bedroom i was struck with the experience of never going home again. me, my family, my friends, we're a diaspora, and on the drive up i spoke with a close friend about the nature of the past.
there is seemingly an inherent danger to momentos, somewhere under the surface where we often dare not look. sometimes it is simply too easy to approach one's own past wrecklessly. after all, you know everything about it... right?
of course not. i would hope most people &emdash; or at least most adults &emdash; are aware that the past is in many ways fleeting, and our own internal eyewitness is unreliable. all that to say you never know what will come to the surface when you're faced with an inevitable reality.
...
my parents are finally selling the florida home i lived in for over 20 years. i flew back to visit, collect some of my things i'd left, and pick up my car to drive it back to chicago. moments before leaving, i stood in my old bedroom and just looked, realizing this would be the last time i'd see the inside of this house, and probably the last time i'd set foot in florida. it was more than i expected, especially as i was never particularly fond of florida and had long lost any connection to that state and the town i'd lived in for so long.
it's the first time i've felt so adrift, it's terrifying. but here i am, in the home i've made somewhere new, finding out that's what is it from a visit to what i thought was home. there's probably a word for this specific combined feeling in the dictionary of obscure sorrows somewhere but i really don't feel like finding it.
...
how long do you keep momentos for someone you loved that has died? it's impossible to answer, but it feels like it depends on more things that who they were and how you lost them. it's not always just whether or not it's painful, it's the type of pain it brings you. the pain of loss is not the pain of failure.
