The Art of Remembering, an extract for All Souls' Day 2020

November 2, 2020

With outdoor services, prayer walks, and light displays, All Souls' Day will look very different this year. Commemorating the faithfully departed can be an emotional time for many. Young people in particular can have a difficult time with bereavement. Whether they have lost a family member or friend, there are often little reminders of their lost ones in the items they once held. In this extract from Lights for the Path, Madeleine Davies suggests ways that a loved one's processions can be saved and treasured, such as through use of a memory box.

An Extract from Chapter 11: The Art of Remembering

They’re not just clothes, Dad, they’re what’s left over after a beautiful life has ended. Just like the photos and videos, these are a handle on the best person any of us ever knew. There’s no such thing as just clothes, just perfume, just ornaments, not when they’ve been touched by somebody’s life, by Mum.
John, in The Lost Boys’ Appreciation Society
by Alan Gibbons

It’s now over 20 years since my mum died, but I think about her at least once a day. I can bring to mind general things: the shape of her face, the tanned skin on her back in summer, the way she said my name. And I can remember specific moments in time, like the instructions she gave me after sewing me into a 101 Dalmatians outfit for a party (which I subsequently forgot, rendering me unable to eat thanks to my paws). If somebody asked me to describe her, I could do it with ease. I wish I had known this as a teenager, when I was worried that my memories of her would fade.

Just Things

In my family, it was easy to talk about my mum after she died. We kept pictures of her all over the house, and for many years my parents’ bedroom remained unchanged: her clothes hung on the same rails, her jewellery and perfume lay unused on her dressing table. It was
many years before we began to put things away, and today I have a box containing things that I kept, including a thick, brightly coloured jacket, a recipe book that belonged to her mother and a diary that she kept the year before she died. Whenever I look at them, not only does my mum appear in my mind, but it feels like I’m being transported to another world: my childhood, before everything changed.

Before I left home at 18, I would sometimes feel anxious that leaving things as if my mum was still alive was morbid or unhealthy. In films the fact that someone has left a deceased person’s room intact is usually a sign that something is wrong – that they are in denial about what has happened. I don’t think that was the case for us, but maybe leaving the house unchanged was a sort of silent resistance against any suggestion that we ‘move on’, and obediently progress through the usual practical steps expected of grievers. We would do what we wanted, when we wanted.

I know that we didn’t want to go to the other extreme, erasing any sign that my mum had existed. Perhaps that’s why we kept my mum’s clothes for so long – they seemed so intimate. She had picked them out, washed them, hung them up and matched them with jewellery and perfume. I knew that she would never need them again, but get- ting rid of them felt like saying that out loud.

I don’t think that there is a single set of rules we can apply when it comes to possessions, but my personal tips are:

1 It is okay to keep some things. You can take your time when choosing. Think carefully about what you would like to keep and why, and find somewhere safe to keep it. I’ve come to see that doing this can be a better way of treasuring possessions than simply keeping everything. One idea is to create a memory box. A cardboard or plastic storage box is fine, but some people like to use one that belonged to the person or find one that they can decorate. I don’t regularly look at my box, but it gives me enough comfort to know that these things are safe.

2 You don’t have to do everything at once: you can pack away possessions, like clothes, for example, without giving them away, and perhaps do that at a later stage.

3 If you are going to be spending time sorting through things, make sure that you plan in activities that offer you a break: a trip to a film or a chat over the phone with a friend. I have found that sorting is a tiring process, because possessions inevitably give rise to memories, and choosing what to keep and what to give away is emotionally tasking. Be gentle with yourself.