Ghost Busting

I went to a creative writing workshop today. It was the end of a process I missed, drowning in the flood. The topic of the author’s book is based on photographs of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. She spoke of flooding and the watermarks it leaves  on people’s lives. She spoke of images of people’s ruined homes, rooms full of ghosts, walls with stories, and people’s responses to those writings.

While I listened, I imagined sitting in my ruined basement, pieces of missing walls, absent floors, absent furniture. Places where Grant’s roll top desk sat. Bins of my children’s childhood memories. The books missing from discarded bookcases, the space where my mother’s recipe books sat unopened, waiting for the day I would use them. The crossword dictionary I gave her for her birthday, an attempt to stimulate her fading control over her mind. What stories could I find within me if I sat there. i thought about it. Stories that may make me cry. Am I ok with crying? I haven’t cried about it at all.

Writing would be a way to release those tears, for all I have lost. Not the objects so much as the significance they had in my life, the reasons that led me to keep them, to save them. What are the ties that bound me to these objects? Baby blankets no one will use. Teddy bears from Erika’s childhood. All lost.

They belonged to the past, but I had woven ties to my future with these things. My mother’s books would have gone to my daughter, who inherited her grandmother’s passion for cooking. The blankets and keepsakes were saved for grandchildren I was unwilling to admit I will never have. My daughter doesn’t want children. I respect her choice, but a visceral part of me cries and grieves this. Those objects were soaked in this grief.

What do I do with my grief now? Who knows, I certainly don’t know.

I still have bins to sort through. These were not flooded, but they are full of objects for which I have no use. What expectations will they force me to release?