Living with the Memories

It seems so innocuous, the chapstick sitting on my nightstand, between the water glass and the book I’m reading. It’s not.

I found it in the pocket of his work pants, when I was laundering the clothes that someone had shoved into his suitcase, cleaning out his room after he died.

Every day, when I use it, I think of my son.

There were times early on when I had to put it in the drawer, but the last few months it has stayed visible, and it is starting to run out.

It’s not that I don’t want to remember, but sometimes I need to manage the memories.

“Don’t,” said my sister, when I told her I was taking Carson’s name off his Christmas stocking. “You’ll regret it.”

I did it anyway, carefully picking out the stitches that I had done so many years ago. Between working as a teacher and having two small children, I didn’t have time to make him a stocking that year, so I bought one and personalized it. Carson was just old enough to recognize his name— and his sister’s, on her stocking.

I hung the stocking on the mantle last Christmas, the first December without him. Of course I thought of him every time I looked at it, but it was a gentler memory than if his name was still there.

The large framed baby pictures are on a shelf in the storage room. They came off the wall when the family home was for sale 6 years ago, at the real estate agent’s suggestion, and have never been hung since. I have very few family pictures out: a black and white photo of Cindy and me, when we were junior bridesmaids at our sister Linda’s wedding; a selfie with Scott on a cold west coast beach, when we first decided that this was something real. I have one picture of Carson, on the foodie wine tour I’d got him when he was 21. I’d dug it out for an earlier blog post, and it moves around the house, not in a frame but propped one place or another. Sometimes it goes in a drawer.

I don’t have any photos of my mother out, but two of her needlepoints are on my wall. A native print of a hummingbird hangs in my kitchen, bought by my brother Eric, who died a decade ago. It was a wedding present, 25 years before that. In my kitchen drawer is a tile trivet, made by my father, who didn’t live long enough to see my children. They are all gentle reminders of people I loved who are gone.

I see Carson in the batik he made in grade 7, that I pulled out and hung, much to his embarrassment, in my condo in Victoria. It is on the wall by the entry here, above the basket with the wooly hat that was the first present he bought me with his own money and no assistance from his father.

Sometimes the thought of Carson rips through me like unexpected lightning, leaving me shaking and crying. Sometimes it comes more softly, in a memory that makes me smile through tears. Sometimes I can mention him casually, as if he was simply someplace else, now.

Sometimes I need the pain of my grief, to remind me that Carson existed, and that I loved him so much. Sometimes there is a fierce joy in the sorrow.

This morning, I need to dig into the chapstick with my finger to get anything out. I walk to the bathroom and throw it away.