A memory in space

On what we leave behind

In 2015 we moved my then 86-year-old grandmother from the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield, a place she'd called home for nearly 60 years, to an old folks home in the city.

My grandfather passed in 2006, and my grandmother had carried on without him in that house, the memory of him persisting in the furniture and the picture frames, the armchair where he used to sit, the old computer in the basement from which he would send his grandkids emails.

My mother, one of the few children still living in Montreal, enlisted me to help. My grandmother didn't have a whole lot to move, and we packed up her home over the course of a weekend. She couldn't keep much, moving into a smaller space and without the need for many of her things.

What struck me – while opening drawers and closets, pulling out little containers from under the bed, throwing away expired food and forgotten canned goods, and packing the contents of my grandmother's life into cardboard boxes – was the memory embedded in this home. The papers, receipts, and letters stuffed into drawers. The pictures of people I didn't recognize, in albums that hadn't been opened in decades. The dust collected on vases, the scribbled notes on a pad by the old landline, and tiny trinkets of some significance scattered about her house. I was unearthing a private life, and a history. A version of my grandmother I hadn't met.

I thought about what someone might uncover packing up my things at the end of my own life. What they might think of me and my private possessions. My journals and sketchbooks filled with errant notes and ideas, my photo albums capturing moments interesting only to me, the books I've collected over the years, the various little buttons and rocks and objects I've assigned temporal sentimental value. What kind of story would this all tell? What kind of impression would it leave behind?

In the 11 years I've been in New York City I've lived in 10 apartments, and each time I pack up my things is an opportunity to take stock of the jumble that represents my material footprint. Beyond the boxes, though, I'm often quite moved when going from one home to another, the act of leaving the space behind stirring something inside my heart. In each place I like to think I've left some kind of mark – not something physical, but like the space itself will remember me.

Space holds more sentimental energy and memory for me than objects do. Whenever I return somewhere I haven't been in years, a strange sense of knowing washes over me, like I'm living in a half forgotten dream. A temporal connection links me to the person I used to be when I last stood in that spot, or sat in that chair, or looked through that window, or noticed how the light plays on the wall for a brief moment every sunny afternoon.

While objects get moved, or tossed, or destroyed, or transformed, the space remains. Eventually, it too will become dust, but the memory lives on all the same.

~until next time, R

Some things I’m thinking about:

📄 Life Without Escaping by Sam Peitz

🎧 Podcast: Henrik Karlsson – Cultivating a Life that Fits (Dialectic)

📄 Game Designers vs Education Researchers on Unguided Instruction

🎵 Pines by Men I Trust