The Effect of Small Losses

[KeithD]

The loss of symbols of small memories sometimes overshadows the collection and husbanding of larger memories for me. Although I don’t conceive of having enough words for a mainstream essay on this—yet—one is trying to form, and I’m wondering if others have had the same experience of feeling the loss of some small symbol of their experiences that has had a greater “regret” and "frustration" pull on their lives than would seem needed.

I lost my high school ring at the bottom of a Virginia lake during my college years. I would have replaced it with my college ring within a couple of years anyway, but in the intervening years I lost memories by not touching the ring on my finger and having events during high school crop up. Now I’m feeling a similar loss by having lost so much weight from a long illness that I can’t wear my college ring (or my wedding ring) and, when I go to touch a ring on my finger to conjure up a small memory or two, nothing is there.

A photo of my dad taking Ernest Hemingway on an elk-hunting trip into the Rockies has conjured up enough questioning images in my mind for me to have written about it. I put that photo someplace. Each time I try to find it to analyze what it was conveying, it’s not there.

My dad sang in a Western quartet that cut a record ("Cool, Clear Water," et. al.), something I didn’t know until I’d come back to the states for his funeral and found my mother playing the record over and over again. I was given the record—a small symbol of how little I knew my father, a military man often off to war someplace other than where I was. Each time I go into a storage closet or the attic or sort through my record collection, I look for the record, to no avail.

My only souvenir of having gone to Ephesus, Turkey, was a bookmark I bought on the street of the Turkish port city of Kusadasi. I keep up to three books in current reading, and I’d come to use this bookmark for my principle read and to run my fingers over the ornately woven bookmark while I was reading to conjure up images and experiences of living in the Mediterranean. Somewhere in some hospital or rehab room over the last year, I lost that—and have (inordinately) felt the loss.

One oft-used locale in my Cyprus stories is the Tree of Idleness restaurant in the town square of Bellapais, Turkish Cyprus, on the mountainside above Kyrenia. It was here that the novelist Lawrence Durrell rented a villa and wrote part of his Alexandria Quartet, a villa I also rented for a couple of years and where my novel writing began. I don’t collect or much wear baseball caps, but the owner of the Tree of Idleness gave me a baseball cap advertising his restaurant. On a trip to Savannah, Georgia, I lost that hat somewhere near the riverfront. I’ve been back to Savannah twice since then and found myself going to the area where I thought I’d lost the cap and looking for it—even when knowing it wouldn’t be there.

Despite living a “lots of everything” life, I find myself constantly searching for small symbols of experiences that I’ve lost—and inordinately felt the loss.

At least I can write about them.

Anyone else find themselves constantly searching for lost small memories like this? Do you include them in your writing?

 

[intim8]

When I was first living on my own, I broke my favorite coffee mug, one I'd had since I was a kid (yes, I drank coffee from when I was very young). It hit me way harder than it should have.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think I know what you mean. When we talk amongst ourselves in forums like this one, we talk in generalities and broad concepts, but we actually live our lives in the particulars. The details matter. Moments, tokens. I'm not an overly sentimental person, I'm not a "collector," and I don't think too much about physical things, but they still matter. Sometime after my divorce, I lost my wedding ring. To this day I have no idea what happened to it. I feel bad about it, in a way, because even though the marriage failed I think I should honor it, but on the other hand I can't help but feel that losing the ring was symbolic of something--that it wasn't right, and it wasn't something to cling to. And I can honestly say I've never once regretted getting divorced, despite the many difficulties it caused. Maybe there was some part of me that subconsciously wanted to lose it. I think about that often.

I haven't worked this sort of thing into my stories yet, because I write mostly fun fantasy stories, but that may change with time.

 

[KeithD]

I haven't worked this sort of thing into my stories yet, because I write mostly fun fantasy stories, but that may change with time.

This may be working itself into my writing as a "wrapping up life" thing. I have collected hotel stationery from around the world on my travels and have a 200-page album to collect those in. In recent years it's been harder to collect hotel stationery than it has been to check into fancy hotels because hotels aren't providing letterhead stationery anymore. This March I made my 200th--and last--entry in the album. It wasn't lost on me in "wrapping up life" activity that this was the last and it was too late to start another album even if hotels were providing letterhead stationery anymore. In the same vein, I've painted (individually) my own Christmas cards for decades. I'm coming up on 50 years of that, painfully aware that I'll make cutting that off at 50 as a "wrapping up life" activity.

End of life writing?

 

[KeithD]

When I was first living on my own, I broke my favorite coffee mug, one I'd had since I was a kid (yes, I drank coffee from when I was very young). It hit me way harder than it should have.

I know exactly what you mean about that. Having broken a treasured memory coffee mug, I latched onto the next one--a mug made at a pottery with connections to stories I've written. And I've been so aware of the memory importance of the mug that I acquired two of them so I'd have an identical cup to back up breakage of the first one. Thankfully, I'm beyond thirty years of managing to keep the original unbroken.

 

[intim8]

I have collected hotel stationery from around the world on my travels and have a 200-page album to collect those in.

Wherever I go, I buy the most local newspaper I can find. Even if I just stop for gas on a road trip. I have file boxes full of them now. I have a US map where I've used a highliter marker on every road I've driven. The map is almost all highliter now.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It struck me that after my mom passed, my sister went through her photos - she had a lot of them - and . . . Well, my sister and I don't know who is in many of them. My grandfather took photos of his co-workers on construction sites. So who were those guys? We can't even place the locations. Long Island? Burlington, VT? Is it in the 1940's? 1950's?

Not to get too morbid about it, but these small loses are important to us, yet they will also fade with time. My sister also found my junior-high yearbook (middle school to most of you), which I hadn't seen in decades. It was fun to look through it again, I admit. But will anyone care about the class of '69 in 2069? Will the book even still exist at that point?

 

[lovecraft68]

It struck me that after my mom passed, my sister went through her photos - she had a lot of them - and . . . Well, my sister and I don't know who is in many of them. My grandfather took photos of his co-workers on construction sites. So who were those guys? We can't even place the locations. Long Island? Burlington, VT? Is it in the 1940's? 1950's?

Not to get too morbid about it, but these small loses are important to us, yet they will also fade with time. My sister also found my junior-high yearbook (middle school to most of you), which I hadn't seen in decades. It was fun to look through it again, I admit. But will anyone care about the class of '69 in 2069? Will the book even still exist at that point?

One of my cousins took over from my great aunt as the family historian and he mentioned an AI site where if you upload the photo, it can often times come up with similar photos from the time period and a name associated with them. He said it's a bit hit or miss, but he's found quite a few attempts to give accurate results or get him closer to piecing together an identity.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

People always say when there's a fire, pictures are the one thing they miss most.

I can identify. I was going to my high school reunion, and I went through all my old pictures from trips we'd shared, and just all of us growing up together. One friend offered to take them to her office and have her creative team make copies. I didn't want to let them go, but I thought it might seem rude if I declined.

A few months later, some of us met for coffee, and she apologized and said she'd moved offices and the pictures had gotten tossed. That was a few years back, but I still about think those pictures that were the only thing I had to capture those moments in time.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Despite living a “lots of everything” life, I find myself constantly searching for small symbols of experiences that I’ve lost—and inordinately felt the loss.

Nothing is ever lost. Objects are merely physical representations of ideas. The object fades, breaks, wears down, but the idea is indestructible. All of the things and everything that they represent will be there at the end.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Nothing is ever lost. Objects are merely physical representations of ideas. The object fades, breaks, wears down, but the idea is indestructible. All of the things and everything that they represent will be there at the end.

I suppose that is true if one was Plato or Cicero or someone else at that level. Otherwise, the only thing that truly endures for the long-haul is the genetic coding in our DNA. I guess I'd like to know who all of my ancestors were since the time of Plato. I bet the vast majority of them were peasants. But, hey guys and gals, thanks for your efforts; I'm here now!

 

[gunhilltrain]

One of my cousins took over from my great aunt as the family historian and he mentioned an AI site where if you upload the photo, it can often times come up with similar photos from the time period and a name associated with them. He said it's a bit hit or miss, but he's found quite a few attempts to give accurate results or get him closer to piecing together an identity.

I think the earliest photos were taken in the 1830's or about then. Before that, if one was an aristocrat perhaps, someone would paint your portrait. Everybody else: poof, they are gone.

When no one has any memory of who or what is in those photos, those moments of time become meaningless. And I think it happens faster than one would like to imagine. There is a photo of my grandmother (about age 20, I'd guess) up on the mantelpiece, but she passed right after I was born. I've seen later pictures of her. Yet there is no one with a living memory of her.

If somehow I passed her on the street and she was wearing modern clothes, I doubt I would recognize her. Her husband, my grandfather (the same one who was in construction) lived until I was 25. If somehow he was revived and I saw him on the street, I'd go, "Hey Grandpa, what are you doing back here?"

 

[Bramblethorn]

Anyone else find themselves constantly searching for lost small memories like this? Do you include them in your writing?

For me, not so much with physical objects, partly because I'm a packrat and bad at throwing objects out long after I should've.

But with people who are dead or otherwise permanently gone from my life, it's often the small things that make it feel raw. That moment of "I wish I could show this to X", over some trivial thing that would have tickled their interest. It activates an old habit that can no longer be satisfied.

 

[XerXesXu]

I’ve always travelled, and travelled light. I’ve been settled for eight years and my personal belongings don’t quite fill two drawers in my chest-of-drawers. My daughter, who lives with her husband and children, has a bedroom stuffed with childhood memories (Daddy, who’s been in my bedroom?). My wife and son have two chests of drawers and a wardrobe each, my wife has appropriated the ya-ya’s bedroom as a dressing room and filled it with clothes. When they overflow the surplus isn’t thrown away, it’s put in storage boxes and stored.

When I touch my wedding ring it reminds me that Englishmen don’t wear wedding rings and of my wife’s cultural insensitivity. I keep only two mementos of my previous life, my robeing bag and beret and medals. A colleague asked for the contents of my bag for his son who’d just been called to the bar in the belief that they’d confer on him a little of the magic.

I have most of our family’s photos in digitised form now, but there are some I remember which seem to be lost:

– my Great-Grandmother(b1853 d1961) and her husband taken in ~ 1870, he in his fishermans smock, she looking young and beautiful in Victorian dress and work apron

– my Mother dressed in a ball gown, she was eighteen and an entrant in a beauty pageant.

Times change. If I go on Facebook now, I’ll see the photographic record of what my daughter and grand children did yesterday, and less fun, what my son did yesterday.

Oh, also most of the artworks on my walls are originals or limited edition prints given to me by my artistic friends.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

It struck me that after my mom passed, my sister went through her photos - she had a lot of them - and . . . Well, my sister and I don't know who is in many of them. My grandfather took photos of his co-workers on construction sites. So who were those guys? We can't even place the locations. Long Island? Burlington, VT? Is it in the 1940's? 1950's?

Not to get too morbid about it, but these small loses are important to us, yet they will also fade with time. My sister also found my junior-high yearbook (middle school to most of you), which I hadn't seen in decades. It was fun to look through it again, I admit. But will anyone care about the class of '69 in 2069? Will the book even still exist at that point?

I had a great aunt who had loads of old family pictures from my mother's side of the family. Over a pot of tea, the two of us sat down together, and as she explained who all of them were, I wrote on the backs of all of them. She even had some old 'tin types,' which I thought were fascinating. And she so many interesting family stories, I jotted down notes about those, too. Since she never had kids, she said that when she died, I could have all the pictures.

When she passed on in her nineties, her niece raced over and cleared out her apartment and threw away all the old pictures, because she said they didn't mean anything to her. Though there was nothing I could do, I felt bad that all that history was tossed into the garbage.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I had a great aunt who had loads of old family pictures from my mother's side of the family. Over a pot of tea, the two of us sat down together, and as she explained who all of them were, I wrote on the backs of all of them. She even had some old 'tin types,' which I thought were fascinating. And she so many interesting family stories, I jotted down notes about those, too. Since she never had kids, she said that when she died, I could have all the pictures.

When she passed on in her nineties, her niece raced over and cleared out her apartment and threw away all the old pictures, because she said they didn't mean anything to her. Though there was nothing I could do, I felt bad that all that history was tossed into the garbage.

That was kind of - presumptuous? - on the part of the niece. Just wondering, is that typical of her behavior? You don't have to answer if it's too personal.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I never knew her very well, she was mother's much younger cousin. She wasn't the least bit apologetic when everyone told her that her aunt had promised to pass on the pictures to me. My great aunt and I both shared an interest in genealogy, which is undoubtedly why she wanted me to have the pictures. But this cousin just fluffed it off, since none of it was interesting to her.

She also threw out an old family bible where my great-grandmother had recorded all the births, deaths and marriages in the family, going back for over 150 years. That was something else I would have loved to have had that wound up in the dump.

 

[Yarglenurp]

I have not lived nearly enough decades to be nostalgic about my past. I may some day, but I honestly hope to always have enough to look forward to for the future that looking backwards will be unappealing to me. To me, self-reflection is only useful as a tool for improving how I do things in the future.

 

[Voboy]

When I was first living on my own, I broke my favorite coffee mug, one I'd had since I was a kid (yes, I drank coffee from when I was very young). It hit me way harder than it should have.

I've broken many coffee mugs, or seen others break them. Each one has been a loss, because I tend to use the same mug for a long time and almost all of them were either gifts or souvenirs.

When they break, I carefully pick up the pieces and line them up on my windowsill at work, as emblems of the human clumsiness that robbed them from me. I can still smile when I see them, since the memories attached to them are still there... but there is poignancy now, because the mugs themselves are dead.

I'm similarly attached to boots. Not shoes, though.

 

[KeithD]

I have not lived nearly enough decades to be nostalgic about my past. I may some day, but I honestly hope to always have enough to look forward to for the future that looking backwards will be unappealing to me. To me, self-reflection is only useful as a tool for improving how I do things in the future.

If you are a writer, your past provides rich inspiration. Your future, not so much.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I have not lived nearly enough decades to be nostalgic about my past. I may some day, but I honestly hope to always have enough to look forward to for the future that looking backwards will be unappealing to me. To me, self-reflection is only useful as a tool for improving how I do things in the future.

Someone asked me if I could look into her husband's background. His mother died when he was a baby. And since he was passed around to different relatives to raise, he never knew anything about his family, or where they came from.

When I finished the research and put his tree and book together, so he could see who he was and who his ancestors were, he got so emotional he couldn't stop crying. He said he hoped before he died, that he'd find out where he came from. We were at a dinner party, and everyone got pretty emotional.

I've discovered that most people at some point in their lives are curious to know where they come from. Sometimes it happens when they have kids of their own and they ask about their background. Although I'm sure there are people who just don't care, and aren't really interested to know about their ancestors, or where their roots began, though I think most of us are at least curious.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

In some ways I have the opposite problem - one parent is a historian, both parents and in-laws are pack-rats, saving everything that might be important or useful. Which means it can be hard to find what is actually important or useful, and harder still to decide to throw things away.

Yet it has to be done or at some point the next generation will be swamped and have to chuck it all. I've seen it with my cousin's stuff, and my parents are making valiant efforts to get rid of junk and old papers now, with 'jokes' about not making it too easy for future historians. My in-laws have spent five years now getting rid of MILs clutter, confirming that pretty much none of it was remotely valuable.

We've physically switched to a society where instead of homes being cheap and 'stuff' expensive, now stuff is dirty cheap and space is expensive. But our brains haven't caught up.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I was thinking earlier about how this can happen in reverse.

I still have a decorative cup that was given to me a long time ago by a (then) love interest. When I was still seeing that person every day, the cup meant a lot to me: whenever I sighted it on my desk, I would be reminded of them and my experiences with them.

Now, with time between me and that love interest, the cup doesn't inspire any memories in me. I've lost the sentiment but not the item itself, which is an odd feeling.

 

[RoperTrace]

I've broken many coffee mugs, or seen others break them. Each one has been a loss, because I tend to use the same mug for a long time and almost all of them were either gifts or souvenirs.

When they break, I carefully pick up the pieces and line them up on my windowsill at work, as emblems of the human clumsiness that robbed them from me. I can still smile when I see them, since the memories attached to them are still there... but there is poignancy now, because the mugs themselves are dead.

I'm similarly attached to boots. Not shoes, though.

Funny about our affinity to coffee mugs, I'm the same way. I recently broke my most recent 'favorite'. It was a silly prize from a Livestream in the UK, where we entered into a digital duck race down a stream, and luckily my duck came in first. Whenever my wife or I break a mug, we look at each other and one of us says, "Damn, we can't have nice things."

 

[gunhilltrain]

The loss of symbols of small memories sometimes overshadows the collection and husbanding of larger memories for me. Although I don’t conceive of having enough words for a mainstream essay on this—yet—one is trying to form, and I’m wondering if others have had the same experience of feeling the loss of some small symbol of their experiences that has had a greater “regret” and "frustration" pull on their lives than would seem needed.

I lost my high school ring at the bottom of a Virginia lake during my college years. I would have replaced it with my college ring within a couple of years anyway, but in the intervening years I lost memories by not touching the ring on my finger and having events during high school crop up. Now I’m feeling a similar loss by having lost so much weight from a long illness that I can’t wear my college ring (or my wedding ring) and, when I go to touch a ring on my finger to conjure up a small memory or two, nothing is there.

A photo of my dad taking Ernest Hemingway on an elk-hunting trip into the Rockies has conjured up enough questioning images in my mind for me to have written about it. I put that photo someplace. Each time I try to find it to analyze what it was conveying, it’s not there.

My dad sang in a Western quartet that cut a record ("Cool, Clear Water," et. al.), something I didn’t know until I’d come back to the states for his funeral and found my mother playing the record over and over again. I was given the record—a small symbol of how little I knew my father, a military man often off to war someplace other than where I was. Each time I go into a storage closet or the attic or sort through my record collection, I look for the record, to no avail.

My only souvenir of having gone to Ephesus, Turkey, was a bookmark I bought on the street of the Turkish port city of Kusadasi. I keep up to three books in current reading, and I’d come to use this bookmark for my principle read and to run my fingers over the ornately woven bookmark while I was reading to conjure up images and experiences of living in the Mediterranean. Somewhere in some hospital or rehab room over the last year, I lost that—and have (inordinately) felt the loss.

One oft-used locale in my Cyprus stories is the Tree of Idleness restaurant in the town square of Bellapais, Turkish Cyprus, on the mountainside above Kyrenia. It was here that the novelist Lawrence Durrell rented a villa and wrote part of his Alexandria Quartet, a villa I also rented for a couple of years and where my novel writing began. I don’t collect or much wear baseball caps, but the owner of the Tree of Idleness gave me a baseball cap advertising his restaurant. On a trip to Savannah, Georgia, I lost that hat somewhere near the riverfront. I’ve been back to Savannah twice since then and found myself going to the area where I thought I’d lost the cap and looking for it—even when knowing it wouldn’t be there.

Despite living a “lots of everything” life, I find myself constantly searching for small symbols of experiences that I’ve lost—and inordinately felt the loss.

At least I can write about them.

Anyone else find themselves constantly searching for lost small memories like this? Do you include them in your writing?

I've seen what happens when people's houses or apartments get cleaned out after they die. Their relatives will take a few valuable items and everything else gets tossed out.

I once bought a house that was an estate sale. (That's back when I still had money for such things!) The deceased owner was a World War II vet who passed suddenly. When I first saw the house, everything he owned was still in place, including his clothes in the closets. His car was still in the garage.

His son took a few items. After that, a full-size dump truck was parked in the driveway to haul away everything else that was thrown out. The man's memories were his own; no one else cared.