Losing a part of your past

One  gerontologist has suggested that as we age we externalize our identity onto things.  For example, we buy an inexpensive mug to remind us of a vacation we have  enjoyed .  Every time we use it we remember fondly the vacation and the people we were with.  Over time with the fading of our brain power, the object becomes an external memory, like an external hard drive now available to increase the storage capacity of our computers.  Over time, we begin to fear that in letting go of the tobject we will lose the memory and thus a part of our very selves.

Jane Marie Thibault

Pilgrimage into the Last Third of Life

Early last week I did something very stupid and careless, and it caused me to be in a funk all day Tuesday.  I was very upset.  I never cry.  My tear ducts seem to  long ago  have dried up like some wet-season lake  in the middle of an arid plain.  But I felt like crying that day.

What was this happenstance that brought me to such misery and short-lasting grief?  

I’m a packrat.  I’ve managed to cart with me on moves countless personal artifacts from long ago in my past:  old photos, certificates, report cards, letters, papers written in high school, college and, more recently, graduate school.  And countless other things I couldn’t bear to part with.  Since I spent a number of years working for various small weekly newspapers, turning out a rather considerable number of news stories, features, columns, photo essays, and the like, I have managed to save a half dozen or so manila folders stuffed with clippings representing every imaginable sort of small town newspaper writing.  Over the years, I’ve gone through these folders, reading random pieces and reminiscing about my journalistic past, some of the happiest, but also most stressful periods of my life.  I was 41 when I left the field of journalism for good, never having found that just-right job where I could have remained for many years.   

In  those clippings folders there are perhaps five articles that I treasure more than all the rest, and right up there at the top of that list was a photo feature taking up an entire newspaper page on the history, inhabitants, and homes of a small town in the county where I worked at a twice-weekly newspaper, and a pretty good one at that.  It was my first newspaper job, and it was one of my first stories. I was only 24 and was thrilled to be actually writing for a living and having my byline on articles that I had reported on and researched.  I loved going into work every day.  I was meeting interesting people.  I was utilizing my skills as a photographer and was  filled with the enthusiasm and idealism of a young person starting out in their first job in what I sensed would  become my lifelong career and avocation.  It turned out I was quite wrong about that,  but nevertheless I was on a career path that felt perfect for me.  

This little town was special in that it was a fading reminder of what small railroad towns in South Carolina were really like.  It had some of the most wonderful late 19th century houses along the railroad tracks, and best of all it had a rather large old general store that had been there  seemingly forever.  During the course of interviewing people in the town for a photo feature, I met a most interesting older man sitting around the proverbial pot-bellied stove in the middle of the store on a cold morning in February.  The wood  floor creaked, and the smells of the old store were intoxicating reminders of a simpler era, pre-Walmart and the Internet.  Later, one of my good friends visited the store with me and we bought Cokes in bottles and crackers and took pictures inside and out.  I’ll never forget that time and place, now 43 years and a seeming eternity in the past.

Needless to say I was very proud and happy when the story on the town and the photographs I took to accompany it were published.  I just sat at my desk and kept looking at it and re-reading it.   The newspaper clipping of the story became a priceless artifact for me.  I held onto it for decades, until last week, that is.

I mentioned the article to one of our caregivers who used to live near the town, and she was astonished when she saw the photo of the older man in the general store.  They were related by marriage.  I couldn’t believe the coincidence.  Her mother-in-law wanted to read the article so I said I’d get a photo copy made.  The next morning when I went to retrieve the clipping from where I thought I’d put it, it was nowhere to be found.  I looked everywhere, my frustration and bewilderment mounting.  Finally I stopped looking when it occurred to me what probably had happened.  I’d put it on top of the sofa where I was sitting the night before reading newspapers.  I then put the newspapers I had read on top of the clipping and apparently it got tucked into those papers and I tossed them in recycling.  Later that morning the roar and commotion of a recycling truck left behind a big empty blue container.  My clipping was gone.

I’ve got a request in to a library for a copy of the article, but if they can’t send it to me I’ll make the trip to the library and copy it myself.  It’s only a hundred miles away.  But it won’t be the same as that precious, yellowed newspaper clipping.  What memories that story from long ago brought back, every time I carefully unfolded the large piece of aging newsprint.

.