I have started cleaning out the attic and storage spaces of the house. I have been cleaning like a woman possessed, changing things, throwing out things, getting rid of things. I want to pare down my existence and get it all into just one box. To get rid of all my material things, all my connections to the past, and only be connected to right now, to this moment, to what happens next.

It helps that I have two fireplaces in the house. They have been going non-stop and I have been burning anything that is fit to burn. This, of course, causes problems in the amount of ashes left behind and necessitates me having to clean out the ashes each morning, as it is about six inches thick at the end of each session.

It's like a giant rummage sale. 'It's Helen's past! Everything must go!' I don't know why I am doing it, perhaps I am preparing myself, perhaps I am just purging, perhaps it is something I should have done ages ago.

I remember just before I moved to Sweden I got rid of almost everything. When I moved to Sweden I had a grand total of 15 boxes and those four pieces of furniture. An entire life lived in one small truckload of goods. I gave away everything else-hundreds of books, a house full of furniture. I don't regret giving any of it away, and I haven't missed it. Ironically, one of the greatest lessons I have learned thus far in life is that possessions are nothing, really. This is not to say I'm not sentimental, for I am. Deeply. I have the quilt my grandmother stitched for me just before her arthritis got too bad to hold a needle. A yellow plastic bath toy that was a gift from my grandfather. Gifts from people that I have loved.

Maybe I am doing it all again, only in a more destructive way. This morning I threw out almost half my CD collection , all of my old journals, and some videos (all of my DVD colletion will kept and not minimized). I went through two boxes of papers that I had and managed to burn one and a half of them. My books are the next to go, although I will just take them to the library in Stockholm and hope they bring someone some peaceful reading. Only a handful of the books will stay with me-'Calvin and Hobbs', 'Griffin and Sabine', 'Flags of Our Fathers', 'The Lovely Bones' and a few others that touched me deeply.

I am determined to be ruthless. Anything related to my ex-husband (other than our divorce decree) went up in a whoosh of fire about two hours ago. Anything that had to do with university, other than my diploma and a letter from Sallie Mae saying I was all paid up also joined the fray. Old car payment books, bank statements, little incidentals having to do with past jobs'¦they all went.

Love letters stayed. They got boxed up and boxed up again. I will keep them, even if I don't read them just now. It's nice to know that I was loved like that at one time, and so love letters will stay, if only as a memory of how young I was once, and how naïve.

And then I got to my box of photos. Endless photos of endless times in my life. Me with Julia Roberts red hair. Me with the Gwenyth Paltrow 'Sliding Doors' short haircut. Me with hair down to the middle of my back. Puppies that grew into dogs, Christmases that were celebrated years ago, and pictures of my first house, a beautiful little number in Dallas. My mom. My sister. Some of the parade of morons that were the men in my life at one time. Snow, sun, sea, sand. All of it in there.

And as I reached my hand into the box to start chucking photos into the flames, I pulled out two photos. One was of my grandfather, sitting in his favorite armchair, laughing. His army issue glasses were falling down the bridge of his nose and the remote control teetered dangerously on the armrest. His cheeks were red and at his feet was his favorite dog, a cattle dog named Babe.

The second one was a picture of Kim, my beautiful Kim, sitting naked in front of a table. The slope of his back was graceful, a burn scar marring the upper left shoulder, the skin moving to lean ribs and a softly sculpted stomach. His legs were crossed, but a ridge of black hair ran down his chest, fanning out just above his pubic bone to the part the camera did not catch. I remember running my hands up and down that back as he sat up in bed. I remember the feel of his stomach pressed against my back at night as we slept.

My God, he was so beautiful.

I put the two pictures back into the box, added my old love letters, and closed the lid. I may be on a quest to rid my heart of my memories, but I cannot rid my mind of these images. The craziness that I am going through right now would lead to a desolation someday, as I realized that I would not have pictures of these parts of my life, the good and the bad, the heaven and the hell.

I think about all the times I have been to antique stores and looked through boxes of old photos. It amazes me that the photos have come to rest there, in a box marked '10 for $1.00!' These pictures are lives. They are unmarked, unclaimed, resting silently for a stranger like me to flip through them and witness their lives, their intimate moments which I haven't been invited to. Women holding babies up to the camera. Graduations. Photos of Ellis Island. A little girl holding a pineapple up to the camera on holiday. Kids tobogganing in a white and gray blur of motion.

The clean and purge will continue, but I feel proud of myself that I have not lost my pictures. No matter where I go in life, I want that stupid box to come with me, even if I never open it again. It's proof that a life was lived with some purpose, that someday even if my pictures wind up in some antique store it is proof enough that I was here. And someday if you are in an antique store and find one of two people looking madly in love, and flip it over and see on the back 'Kim and I, September 1995', then go ahead and buy that one. Perhaps it's me.

And if that picture is bought by someone, perhaps he and I will live on after all.

-H.

PS-Kim and I can be found here, in case anyone has some reading time and wants a good cry.

PPS-Check out Jim's "The Best Of Me" Symphony here.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:03 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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