Letting go of stuff
You may recall the replica bracelet I made in March, and then remade again in June, a bracelet that was just like the one I made for A early in our friendship, one that he wore every day after, and one that disappeared when he did. Ultimately, I’d decided to make another for me to replace the one I couldn’t have, like I’ve done with other things. When you cannot have the man himself, one symbol of him is probably as good as another.
Since June, I think I’ve remade that bracelet at least 2, maybe 3, more times. One time, one of the dogs caught his claw in it and snapped the elastic, so I remade it with strong silk cord and had E tie it on me with a tight knot, my intention being never to take it off. Then I had to take it off for surgery. I wasn’t sure if they really would’ve insisted, but I didn’t want to find out they were quite serious about the “no jewelry” rule after they’d cut it off me and lost it. I slid it off my hand, and back on later, but I loosened the knot, and it fell off my wrist again. There wasn’t enough string left to retie, so I restrung the beads again, this time putting a magnetic clasp on it. But the magnet wasn’t strong enough, and I’ve nearly lost the bracelet a dozen times today.
I could restring it yet again, with a different clasp, but I can’t help but wonder about the fact that that bracelet just doesn’t want to stay on my wrist, for one reason or another. One could chalk it up to shoddy workmanship on my part, but perhaps it’s just not supposed to be there. I don’t know. My world view includes a lot of subtext and no coincidences, and this particular motif has my attention. The bracelet sits on his shrine until I decide what to do with it. It may join the collection of tiny, meaningful things that sit next to his picture in a small hobnailed goblet of pink Depression glass.
As I consider what I want to do about the bracelet, I am also considering the possibility of selling a couple of my guitars, the ones that look beautiful on my wall, but never get played because I play favorites. One of them is no great loss, other than that I bought and embellished (with an excessive amount of labor) a case that I can’t use for any of my other instruments. I bought both for a specific purpose, to be used basically once a year, and we have not bonded as player and instrument.
The other was the first “real” guitar I bought, having started out with a Walmart special. A lot of people have played that one, not the least of which is A, and there was a time I would’ve sworn I’d keep it forever for that reason alone. There was a time when I told people that selling any of my guitars, all of which have names, would be akin to selling one of my children. Now I’m not so sure.
But lately, I keep coming back to the idea that perhaps it would be better for them to be in the hands of people who would love them and play them than for them to continue their neglected lives as expensive wall art. And I kind of surprise myself that this thought should be so insistent, as much angst as I had about not having A’s stuff, stuff he touched. And now I’m considering getting rid of something that was, in all fairness, not his but mine, but he played it. His energy lives in the wood of that guitar as sure as mine, and everyone who’s ever played it, does.
It seems that the lesson of “it’s just stuff” has sunk deeply into my understanding after all. Or maybe it’s easy for me to consider letting go of some things, because I have others. He also played my red electric, which I’d keep, and I wear every day a ring I bought in his memory, so perhaps the bracelet isn’t so crucial at this point.
I really don’t know whence comes this shift, and what I should do about it. When I told E I was considering selling, and put in a request for a quote from a used instrument buyer online he was flabbergasted. I don’t understand me, myself. I only know how I’ve been feeling. Is this the impulse other widows feel when they start clearing out their loved ones’ things? In this case, they are all my things, but his things were never mine to clear out in the first place.
I don’t have to decide today. I don’t have to decide at all. So I wonder why I feel like I do?