When my husband and I are both dead, I wonder what will become of our things? Our personal items like our clothes, our photographs, our scribbled notes, phone books. Our letters.
We have a will, we have an executor, provisions made, plans laid. But when the estate sale is over, there will be some items that will be thrown into the trash.
I started thinking about this when I was looking on the Internets at found photographs. People find discarded photos and post them on blogs. No matter what the subject of the photo the first thing I react to is the fact that the photo was lost or discarded.
My 100 year old great aunt who I may have seen when I was a child, died last week. She had children and grandchildren and great grand children but I am childless. The photos she saved will mean something to them and they will distribute them amongst themselves.
I am not so much estranged from my family, there was no blow up or confrontation, but I don't see my extended family. I haven't seen some of them in 30 years, others in 20, others in 10, some five years ago. The last time I saw my oldest living uncle, he asked me if I was trying to gain as much weight as my husband. I turned to my mother and said, "I am ready to go back to your house, okay?" He didn't say, "I am sorry." He didn't say anything. I mean after all it was my fault I got angry at him, right? He died shortly after that, neither knowing or caring that he had hurt my feelings.
A friend's parent, the gender and the situation have been obscured to protect my friend, is back in their life after a lifetime of protective estrangement. My friend is rather angry about the new role they have assumed. Caretaker. My friend has raised their own family with perfect, textbook, model children. Has the perfect spouse. There are these expectations that the wound will heal and the ending will work as perfectly as a high school senior play. That isn't going to happen. But what I really notice is the anger my friend harbors. It has several different identities and ages. Sometimes my friend sounds 15 years old and frustrated with the parent. At times, my friend sounds 60 and aware that their life has been dominated by this unsatisfied desire to be that parent's child. I of course suggested therapy, but that isn't going to happen.
My friend has a difficult time keeping it all inside and in working order. I would describe my friend, as gender neutral as possible, as button-downed, zipped, belted and suspended, panty-hosed and panty-girdled, would always carry an umbrella, would be damnably early to lunch and dinner, keeps an organized tool shed and garden shed, which both look like a hardware store, the grass is perfect, the wine list completely understood. The grocery list is written according to the layout of the grocery store. Recycles, since the 1970s. Still feels vague guilt about serving and eating table grapes and tuna. Does own taxes, knows own family's social security numbers. Did not vote for Nixon, but you would never know it. Knows which one is Ehrlichman and which one is Haldeman and knows why it doesn't make any difference. Knows the difference between opera length and princess length pearls. No perfume, same toothpaste and soap since childhood. Shoes, which are never worn two days in a row, never come untied. Can make dinner out of saltines and tomato juice. Says, "swell" without a hint of irony. Hair never messes up, even after eight hours asleep or walking into a stiff headwind. Always pumped own gas, even before you had to. Has read new car manual and keeps the service schedule. Has all the pieces, even the shrimp cocktail forks, to the flatware and silver. No grape jelly jar glasses. Tightly wound and it would certainly be a frayed mess, my friend thinks, if it were examined. All the king's psychologists won't be able to put my friend back together again. Certainly not the same way and my friend is convinced that this personae was so difficult to create that it must be the best my friend can do. How could my friend do any better?
The photographs I have should be scanned and cataloged so they don't stick together in some hot attic. But why? What value do they have after I am dead? No one will want them. They won't mean anything and they will of course take on that sadness I see in the found photography on the web.
