The Words We Leave Behind: What NOT to Throw Away

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy;

for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves;

we must die to one life before we can enter another.

~ Anatole France

June is the FLX/WordCount Blogathon!  Join us for 30 Days of blogging madness!

W

hat do we leave behind us?

Specifically, what words do we leave behind?

Peggy Rosenthal has a thoughtful post over at Image Journal about aging, accumulating “stuff” and old journals and letters.

Reading about the tearing and ripping apart of old journals and throwing them out to be burned made me want to cry. 

On the one hand, I understand where she’s coming from: make things easier for the kids once she and her husband are gone; less to throw out.  It’s a charitable act, really.  No one should have to go through all that when they’re in the throes of grief.

Or should they?

What We Leave Behind Isn’t Just Junk

My mother could star in an episode of Hoarders, a show she watches avidly, proclaiming: “How awful!  I’m not THAT bad!” 

In her case, a lot of what she saves really is insane: broken things that she swears she’ll get fixed; items that will be re-purposed into something new. No, Mom, turning the microwave into a ice chest for the patio is not cool, it's white trash.  

The yards and yards of fabric that she said was her retirement ~ she was going to make crafts and sell them ~ has now become her detriment.  I swear the damn things mate like bunnies somewhere in the deep recesses of the craft room.

Image credit: Memories Wallpaper, Google search

But I’m glad she didn’t throw out the ledgers from my Dad’s foray into owning his engineering company.  Seriously, how is it possible that in just under 40 years, prices have changed that much?!  

Or the menu from the restaurant where they met ~ he, the suave and debonair owner with the European flair and she, the young and impressionable back woods waitress with a Southern accent and a braid of thick auburn hair that put Crystal Gayle to shame.

These at least aren’t just detritus from a life well lived ~ they are touchstones that bring the past to life ~ our version of a hologram.  And to touch them is to bring back both the past and the person who lived it.  I would hate for those precious memories to be lost. 

Although, dear God, someone please tell her that Good Housekeeping magazines from 1967-1986 are NOT worth the paper they’re printed on!

In Our Own Words

Accumulating things seems to be an American rite of passage ~ or a disorder, however you want to call it.  So of course I have my fair share.  My several sets of china will tell you of my love of food and hospitality ~ but so will the pictures of all those dinners and parties with friends. 

Each plate and cup and saucer could still act as touchstones to another generation I suppose, although it looks like my sisters will have to take up that clarion call.  No, if all that china got broken, it’s easily replaced.  The memories are safe, tucked away in words and images: in my journals.  In letters.  In blog posts.

The most important thing we leave behind us when we go is our love.  Our caring.  How we felt.  And the memory of that might fade once we’re gone. 

People always talk about how they can’t really remember a loved one’s face anymore.  Or the sound of their voice.

But a journal ~ now there’s a touchstone worth keeping.  There, we remember, in the moment, how it felt to see the Alaskan skyline for the first time.  How deeply betrayed we were by that one relationship.  How our heart pounded with terror as we spent a dark, stormy weekend alone without electricity. 

Just think how much emptier our lives would be if Leonardo de Vinci, Charlotte Bronte, Albert Einstein, George Sand had burned their journals.

The dark and the light, the pain and the hope and the redemption ~ threaded together by ink and the corpses of trees.  They died to give our memories something to cling to.

And that’s why ultimately I wish Peggy hadn’t ripped up those journals.  Such an incredible writer should keep the evidence of her journey ~ both as a writer and as a woman.  Wife.  Mother.  Grandmother.  That kind of talent may pop up a couple of generations from now. 

And how cool would it be for a little girl to learn that her Great-great-great grandmother Peggy was a writer who lived and loved and struggle to find her writerly voice too.

And how grateful that she didn’t leave her a ginormous stack of old magazines.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Read It: Peggy Rosenthal is one of my favorite writers and all her articles are thoughtful and thought-provoking.  I invite you to read and be moved.

The Gift of Receiving: Accepting Another's Gifts

. . .the bridges had been blown up; we squat on piers that don’t connect anything. . .
~ Ruth Kluger 

R

uth Kluger wrote her memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered  about her experience in Austria during (and after) World War II.  After reading Richard Chess’ unpacking and exploration of her observations about bridging the gaps between “my memories” and “our memories,” I not only want to read the book, I want to take his class at UNC!

This gap is illustrated by an incident where Kluger and some friends were relating their experiences of claustrophobia.  The stories they offered seemed piddling compared to the one she could have told regarding her ride in s stifling boxcar to Auschwitz.  She felt that to have told it would have been rude, that somehow her friends would have resented her.  So she remained silent.

That struck me: this fear that Kluger had to share her story because it might make someone uncomfortable.  She said: “And so my childhood falls into a black hole.”  Chess goes on to discuss how an experience can be informative versus transformative and then relates that to writing. 

But I am stuck on the loneliness of Kluger’s statement.

Perhaps it would have been inappropriate to share her memories with the group.  Perhaps she knew that they would not have received it well.  But what if they had been open?  What if the sympathy she feared she might have elicited was what was needed in that moment?  Such a feeling could have been healing, both for her and for her friends.

Why is this?  Why is receiving a gift ~ whether it be of their time, talent, love, support, or even something material ~ so difficult for us at times?  What makes us uncomfortable with another’s generosity?  Chess discusses this discomfort and relates it to writing and learning:

The desire to understand may also be a natural reaction to the discomfort of being confronted with something new and strange, a discomfort that can trigger feelings of inadequacy and failure. Most of us, I expect, don’t want to sit with such unpleasant feelings, and we might be willing to do anything within reason to rid ourselves of them.

Feelings of inadequacy and failure.  Could that be why we are sometimes poor receivers?  Do we think we are unworthy of the gift?  Maybe we have received gifts in the past that were not freely given ~ that came at a price or with emotional strings attached.  But then, those were not real gifts.  They were bribes, Trojan horses.  So fear of gifts becomes a defense, a protection against further pain.

And we do not like pain.  As Chess says, we will do “anything within reason” to avoid it.  Some of us will even do things outside of reason.  But that is a topic for another post.

It might help us to move in the direction of becoming better receivers if we remember that a gift is always given twice: to the receiver and to the giver.  And when we don’t receive someone’s gift, we both lose. Henri Nouwen, the 20^th century mystic, observed

. . . by receiving we reveal to the givers that they have gifts to offer. . . . we make givers aware of their unique and precious gifts.  Sometimes it is only in the eyes of the receivers that givers discover their gifts.

What an incredible and freeing idea! That in receiving a gift well, we are in turn giving back.

May we all work towards becoming better receivers of each other’s gifts.

Oremus pro invicem,
~ Mikaela 

Have you ever felt uncomfortable when you’ve received something?  Were you ever resentful when a friend shared their story?  Share yours in the comments!