Objects that catch our fall

My Dad left me his watch.

It no longer works particularly well, although it is certainly spot on twice a day, every day.

But it's not about the watch. It's certainly not about being able to tell the time. Our smartphones carry the weight of that onerous task.

So yeah... it no longer tells the time.

But it tells me him.

This is one item on a long list of peculiar things that happen when somebody close leaves us. Humble objects are suddenly promoted into classes way above their ideal punching weight. And I think, if we're honest, we might help them get there.

A tarnished set of silver spoons, or a box of pearly buttons that for thirty years haven't attracted the slightest interest suddenly acquire new status and significance.

Yesterday's clutter becomes today's treasure.

And before you think it is, this is not an essay on the sibling squabbles of inheritance. It's simply my thoughts around where grief goes, and why things appear more bearable when our sadness can find a few trinkets to inhabit.

I suppose it's some kind of emotional transfer.

The first image that came to mind was a leaky roof in a storm. When the rain starts dripping through, we instinctively reach for buckets and bowls. We can't stop the shower, and we're certainly not in a position to fix the roof, but we can at least find something to hold the water.

Perhaps that's what these objects do.

The photographs, the favourite mug, the box of buttons. They become little receptacles for something far too big and complicated to deal with all at once.

They hold the drops of our despondency.

And the peculiar thing is that we seem to really need them. I mean it's not like I woke up one morning and thought, "Ooh, I really could do with half a dozen useless objects to clutter up my bedside table"...

No. We reach for them with considerably more purpose than that.

We pick them up, turn them over, feel their weight and, wind them up. We inspect things like parsimonious pawnbrokers, that have been sitting in a drawer for over a decade.

Because something has changed. Not the object, of course. The object is exactly what it was yesterday. The binoculars are still wonky-eyed. The teapot is still chipped. The buttons are still buttons.

But the person who gave them their meaning is no longer here.

And suddenly these ordinary things are being asked to perform a weighty task. They are now required to make someone absent, feel present. That's a big ask for an ashtray.

There's something more-than-a-little absurd about it when you think about it. A watch has no more ability to carry the weight of a life, than a mouse does a cricket bat. A cardigan was never designed to hold a lifetime of memories. And yet we hand these objects the responsibility without really asking if they're up to the job.

But somehow, they seem to manage.

Perhaps because, unlike the person we've lost, they're still here. We can touch them. And I wonder whether that is the point.

Death removes so many ordinary privileges that we barely categorised as privileges in the first place. The ability to jump on Facetime and say hello. To ask a silly question. To hear a familiar voice. To wish someone Happy Birthday.

We lose the special, certainly. But we also lose the ordinary. And it's that, I suspect, that catches us with our emotional trousers down.

I am now no longer able to call my Dad about switching a UK plug to a French one. (Note: I know exactly how to do this, but it was a good area to get my Dad enthused when his memory started to dim a bit)

Or indeed any of the ridiculous little things that somehow become post-mortemly enormous.

But I can still pick up Dad's watch. I can feel its weight in my hand. I can imagine it on his wrist. And for a brief moment, there's something reassuring about the fact that an object which belonged to him now belongs to me. And not remotely in a tee-hee way, like "I got it and you dit-an"...

It is, for me anyway, a small, tangible piece of continuity, in a situation otherwise defined by sadness through absence.

But, as sometimes happens on Platform 13, there is a complication.

Because if these objects become the custodians of our memories, what would happen if we chose to leave it all in the discard pile. Would refusing the broken watch mean losing a little more of Dad?

Logically, no. But grief isn't always all that interested in logic.

And perhaps that's why we find ourselves keeping things we would otherwise have cheerfully donated, slung out or left at the back of a drawer. We're not necessarily sentimental about the object itself. We're worried about what might disappear with it.

As though memory were a finite substance that could leak out through the hole in a bucket.

I don't think we're sentimantalloy silly for looking at it through this lens. In fact, I think it's rather human. We are physical creatures. We understand the world through what we can see, smell, taste, hear and touch. And when someone disappears from that world, perhaps it's entirely natural that we go searching for them among the things they just happened to leave behind.

Mostly bits of old tat that are now elevated to the point where we become almost Golum-like, gently caressing my Dad's magnifying glass, whispering "my precioussss..."

But there is another question I've been turning over.

Are we holding on to these objects because they help us remember, or because we're afraid of what happens when we no longer need them?

I suspect the answer changes with time.

In the beginning, perhaps we need every bucket and bowl we can find. The roof is leaking, the rain is relentless, and the thought of emptying even one of them feels impossible.

But eventually, the sky clears.

It may not stop altogether. Perhaps it never does. But it becomes something we can stand beneath without quite so much fear of being washed away.

And the objects change with us.

Some retain their precious. Others slowly return to being what they always were. A spoon breathes as a spoon again. A cardigan gets worn. A few of the buttons get sewn on a jacket.

And here is where that idea can come up for breath... It's not because we've forgotten. It is far more likely that we no longer need quite so many things to do the remembering for us.

And I rather like that idea.

That the objects which once caught our fall aren't necessarily required to carry us forever.

They simply need to be there when we reach for them.

Which brings me back to the watch.

It doesn't work particularly well, and I have no particular intention of having it repaired.

There are plenty of things in the world that can tell me whether I'm late for lunch. But there aren't very many that can take me back to a particular person, in a particular moment, quite so effortlessly.

And that's a remarkable achievement for a small collection of metal, glass and worn leather.

So the watch no longer tells me what time it is. It simply reminds me of the time we had.

And, for now, that's more than enough.

On Platform 13, wholeness isn’t found - it’s remembered. Because loss is loss, worthiness is universal, and no one is alone. We are all in this together.