Things do not remember you

From a writing group exercise, The smallest thing I’ve ever experienced.

D, my sister’s friend, puts one of her tiny, thin silver rings on my finger. We’ve been going through all Karen’s jewelry, tagging and bagging for the garage sale the next day. I don’t wear jewelry much anymore — I have a ring worn all the time because it was handmade for my Aunt Annie, who gave it to me when I was a teenager. Once in a while I wear earrings or necklaces, but rarely. D thinks I should have this ring to remember Karen by; I didn’t take the last ring she put on my finger, a few days after Karen died. Instead, I gave it to her grieving friend who’d arrived too late to say goodbye, who couldn’t comprehend the empty rooms at my sister’s house, who was weirded out, like I was, to see so many people already wearing Karen’s jewelry so soon after she was gone.

It comforts them — attaches her to them — because she had so much jewelry and it holds strong associations. It represents her. There are hundreds of small plastic bags full of rings, earrings, necklaces, even a few pins and brooches, which none of us can remember her wearing in life. But this time, when D gives me the ring, I wait until her back is turned and put it in the bag with the other tiny silver treasures. I’m not that sentimental about things — when I’m done with them, I’m usually done. If I keep things, I keep them so they will provoke a specific memory. In a way those serve as the diary I don’t keep — they will give me a recounting of an event, a place, without my needing to write it down. They imprint their past on me, on their surface.

There are some things I will be sentimental over, but my tendency for sentiment is vastly different from others’, I know. D might not understand why I won’t take the ring, and it’s best to not try to explain. What I do keep is just as inexplicable: her shampoos, skin care, fragrances, makeup, a few stray items of clothing, and the cheaper décor items that she used in the less-seen spaces of her beautifully decorated home. Karen would laugh at me for taking her cheap, plain Target curtains and the inexpensive throw. She would bray derisively, “Those things? I can’t believe you’re taking that crap.” But the curtains were hers, and used in the room I stayed in when I took care of her, and the chenille throw was near her when she died. We shopped for the skin care, the beauty stuff, the Barney’s clothes, when she came to town because those were her favorite things to do. That was our annual treat: to spend our birthday buying things we didn’t need at shops we shouldn’t have gone to. It isn’t that she wore the clothes or used the creams, or that the fragrances conjure her memory, because the memory is still so painful to me I prefer to not conjure it at all. It only matters that these things give me touchstones: dates, times spent together, shared interests and passions. She wore the jewelry, but that isn’t what binds her things to me. Whether she used something or not, it holds value when it has a memory I can hold on to.