Grief, part one:
Per an arrangement with my sister who is sometimes against my mother’s behest, and I’m thoroughly unsure of how the family dynamics play on this one, but I brought home a couple of pocketknives, a few books, a telescope, a fishing pole, and some of Dad’s Mont Blanc pens. He was proud of those pens, and, in fact, I’ve carried my own for years and years. Goes back to college/university.
Still have it, in my carry-on travel gear, that pen. I set Pop’s pens on my desk, and I figured, judging from its appearance, the fountain pen was dry. I went to make out a bill, and I tested it. There was ink in it. Ink in the pen, not in the bill.
Dad was beginning to show signs of an undiagnosed illness – Parkinson’s be my untutored guess – but I had my own explanation, too. I attributed his palsy to “exhaustion,” as in, he pushed himself too hard for too long and the nerve endings were just frayed. Towards that end, Dad had, at one time, admitted one doctor explained that most post-polio patients died of “fatigue.”
One of the pocketknives I fetched up from my dad’s wardrobe was a small, watered-steel lock-back. Quince-burl handle, a real beauty. I always wondered if he carried it, or used it much. Attached to the tail-end, a small cable key-ring had been fastened. Then, too, there was a large ink stain on the butt of the knife. I was trying to figure out how green ink got there, but as I toyed with the Mont Blanc fountain pen, I realized it was that ink, washed out over time.
It’s not the big things that make up memories, it’s the little things.
Fine Print (redux):
Heinous EULAs are starting to be overturned?
Grief part two:
(I can’t say that I plan to make this a recurring feature, but it helps me.)
There were a couple of books that I grabbed, without thinking, and brought home. As I was sticking most of them on the shelves, I found two inscriptions. The first was a childhood book and the date? The book was a – apparently – gift from my aunt, my dad’s sister. To me, when I was one year old.
The second was a book about herbs, given to my aunt, inscribed as an Xmas gift from the whole family, dated when my sister was barely one year old.
It’s funny, the small innocent things, that pull your mind and heart back to the past. They’re good to have, a quiet companionship of someone on a far journey. My mother wanted me to have her china cabinet, but it’s her amber necklace, strung on jute string, that I have on my table, a memento. The china cabinet sits in the garage, waiting for someone to fall in love with it, not me.
When my mother died, I invited all her friends to come into her study/computer room and choose one thing each to remember her by. So often they chose a book or a figurine or a pen holder, saying they remember her reading it or writing with a pen from it or some other such commentary. It was good to know that she will be companion to them, too, in her own small memento.
Getting sentimental in my old age. Must go back to work.