Personal Effects

The smell of moth balls tied up in nylons hanging in most of the closets, Chantilly body powder, the hint of toast and Lipton tea, candle wax and book pages yellowing—these are the first things you noticed when walking into the house—that unmistakable smell.

This was a house with dozens of clocks, all ticking out of time. A room never seems so empty and quiet as when there is a clock ticking off each second.

When you are going through the house of someone who has recently died, those dozens of clocks—orphaned now from the frail fingers that used to wind them—stand in corners, hang on walls, sit on dressers and end tables with their mechanisms dutifully reminding you of each hour of loss.

You are so much more conscious of time after someone’s death. Each hour is another hour without that person and another hour you yourself can never reclaim.

As you moved through the house, you heard the grandmother clock in the front room, saw the chairs and bookshelves undisturbed. No one spent much time in that front room, not unless it was a holiday. That was how the white carpeting stayed so pristine and without the stains of use.

The kitchen was where you saw the clearest signs of life. This was where you saw the needle that measured her glucose every morning and evening, the little booklet with her neat, precise numbers recording the sugar levels.

You saw at her place setting the crumbs from her toast each morning—such an odd thing she did not brush them away and instead allowed them to accumulate. Such an interesting personality quirk for someone so otherwise orderly.

She sat down at her kitchen table to eat each meal, although she was alone and had not shared that table with her husband for over 27 years. A creature of habit. On the kitchen table was the little basket full of quarters she used to buy her daily newspaper. It was her one reason to leave the house each day, though the idea of her driving at 86-years-old seemed less and less like a good idea.

In the living room, there were novels with bookmarks stopping the words where the reader last paused. There were hand creams and lotions, knitting needles holding the yarn of a half-finished something (baby blanket, dish cloth, hot pad, so hard to know). Next to the phone, there was a notepad with unfamiliar names and doodles.

As you moved through the house, you could see her and smell her and hear her. The house sat in anticipation, waiting for the occupant to return and fill the rooms with life again.

But, her stroke happened in the garage, after a trip to the grocery store, and she never entered the house again. Things were exactly as she left them. You saw the clocks that Grandpa built, the pictures of relatives—some you know and some you probably never will—on the fireplace mantel.

The hesitation is gone now. You do not need permission. You can look more closely at the bookshelves. You can thumb through the books. You look at the items on her desk in her sun room. There are cards signed “love, Howard”—suddenly, your grandparents become more real and human—ironically, now, after they both are gone.

You run your fingers over the keyboard of her computer where she sat down and sent you so many emails over the years. There was at least one a week, signed the same way, always the same way, “So long, God bless, keep smiling, love, Gram.”

So many artifacts. A lifetime of things that are just things, but these are her personal effects. These are your family’s heirlooms now.

You walk down the hallway and stop for a minute in her bedroom, a place you rarely ever stepped. The bed is made. In the hamper are a couple of days’ worth of dirty clothes. She had just bought a couple of pairs of pants and now they hang in her closet, unused.

Going through someone’s personal effects after she has died is daunting. You want to keep as many things as possible to preserve that loved one you lost. The more you have, the closer she seems.

Beside me, now, is the grandmother clock from the front room. The words tempus fugit adorn the face. On my wall is an old picture that hung in my grandmother’s house and before that her parents’ house and grandparents’ house. I have many other things from Grandma’s house. They have begun to smell like her less and less; her touch has started to fade.

But these things are my personal effects now. As I look around, I think about the objects on my tables, the movies, CDs, books upon books, letters, papers—what would people learn about me that they did not know before, if they had to sort through my things.

A part of me and who I am and what I cherish can be deciphered by going through my stuff. Such an idea makes me think the time is coming to sort myself out and finally let go of a few of those dustier boxes.