My Father's Things

In the morning of April 5 2009 my father died, almost 86 years old. He lived alone, was in good health, and died suddenly. I suspect that he never knew what happened, and that he probably left life with less pain than when he was born. To me, the confrontation with his silenced house was perhaps the worst moment of all. It was here, amidst his material realm, that I could see for myself that he was gone. At the same time, I realized that I had lost more than my father. My father’s home was changed into a material construction. The human component – my dad – was the coherent force that had kept this complex integration of human-thing-relations in place as a functional whole – a “home”. In a single day the home had transformed to a ruin in the making, an initial stage of an archaeological site. In the next days, weeks and months my two brothers and I – like sons and daughters of all times – had to cope with the material surroundings of our father and good friend. His absence accentuated the presence of his material world – and enhanced an awareness of how he was mirrored in his things. To me, this evoked a professional interest – perhaps it was a way of getting some mental distance to the hardships of the situation. However, this semi-analytical component became a comforting companion in the process of handling it all, the first “forensic” confrontation – reading his last days and hours in the presence and arrangements of things that were frozen in his last actions, the sorting of things, the difficult decisions of what to do with it all, and the final integration of selected fragments in our own homes. In a way, the process resembled an archaeological excavation, deciding what to keep and what to throw away, what to exhibit and what to store, as we slowly dissected and subsequently destroyed the site. And all through this we were confronted by the imprints of our father – his nature, interests and peculiarities, his biography – also reflecting the times, his town and places he had been, the persons that were close to him – including ourselves. Most things we recognized and remembered, some things we had forgotten, others were new to us. Some things triggered jokes and laughter – others entailed moments of quiet sadness. Even the most absurd objects and placements were interlocked in a one hundred percent true relation to his being and actions. When the job was done, it was painfully clear how volatile and fragile the memories of a person are. Histories and episodes are remembered for some time. Selected fragments of what once were integrated parts of a human being’s material realm are transferred to new homes – where most things are destined to a future out of place. How much of this will survive the next transfer – beyond me? How long before all of this is reduced to objects among many in the faceless conglomerate of accumulated pasts?