Time collides when someone dies | The past overwhelms the present

That popped into my head when I was starting to mop the floor so I had to find a pen and scratch pad and write it down before I got too caught up in what I was doing and forgot. Both ideas popping and forgetting are sort of how my mind works.

Last night my partner and I were talking about a funeral the daughter attended recently for a high school classmate. The daughter is in her fifties and is herself starting to feel the tail of time dragging behind her. After the funeral the classmate’s father went up to the daughter and in his profound grief told her, “You know, your mother was really hot when she was a teenager.” To which the daughter said, “I’ve been told that.”

My memories of the classmate are tied to those of my partner, too. He was a person who always smiled, seemed at that time of his life after graduation to have found profound happiness. We were in our thirties then and the tail of time wasn’t quite so long.

My adventures in grief didn’t start until I was in my early forties when my brother died. I was thinking of him this weekend; when he was in the hospital and I was describing a near misadventure with the chainsaw and a tree and I was laughing about it. The look on his face.

It wasn’t until my fifties that close friends died. My college roommate and best friend and what I did to that relationship. A woman who I never took seriously enough. There’s a post of mine which I won’t link to because it is inadequate. I think of her almost daily still. The beautiful woman, another post I won’t link to. She was foundational for me and I don’t think I would be in this relationship with my partner without that time with her.

I have things I use almost daily from those who have died, beyond the thoughts that cluster like stars in my head. After my brother died I wore his clothes until they fell apart. I have a friend’s jacket and leather gloves. A bin of clothes from another friend that I can’t wear because they smell like him and that smell now is of loss.

I’ve thought of posting a photo of my razor but I haven’t. It was my grandfather’s and it’s the best razor I’ve used for shaving. The nickel plating has worn off showing the brass and the brass is not shiny but has a deep patina of its own. I think the patent dates back to the early years of the twentieth century. Perhaps he had it in France when he fought there in World War I, but probably not. Maybe when he worked in the steel mills before the Depression hit hard. Surely he had it when he was a prison guard in the federal system before the next world war.

The objects are just tokens. All I really have of these people who are gone and the people I know who are still here is memories and the things we share. For some the present implies a future, for others all that remains is the past.