IMMORTALITY, EH?

I recently read an essay by Ellen Lupton in which she said the desire to pass objects on to one’s offspring is part of our longing for immortality. She also said an “heirloom” is an object steeped in family history and handed down from generation to generation.

I have mulled over her words and share with you a number of random, and some kind of odd, thoughts about them.

1. I do not have any heirlooms to pass on to my children. Neither my mother’s family nor my father’s family were particularly sentimental. My mother did have six hobnail sauce dishes that she said belonged to the grandmother she was named after and which I inherited, but in doing a tiny bit of research on them I discovered they actually post-dated great-grandma’s death and couldn’t have been hers. So heirlooms may not be heirlooms at all.

2. In my curio cabinet I have lots of trinkets that have meaning to me, things I can’t bear to give up now even in another pending round of downsizing. But who of my children would see anything of sentimental value in a porcelain ashtray used on Turkish Airlines? I am not ready to part with it yet, but it will be ok if it ends up in the trash after I die, along with the dozens of hand made glass beads I brought home and other such trivia.

3. I feel bad that Trigger sold at auction for $230,000.00...not at how much he brought in but that obviously he had no sentimental value to his owner’s descendants. Bullet did well at the sale too and will join Trigger in some future museum. I think if there is a wax figure of Roy Rogers lolling around somewhere, he ought to join his old buddies. That would be the way kids of my generation remember them. I am sentimental about RR, because I always wanted to marry him and Dale beat me to it.

4. I have more desire for my children to keep my baby book in the family as an “heirloom” – a book of no dollar value whatsoever – than I do for them to keep my great-great-great grandfather George Stevens’s bone toothbrush handle that was dug out of his old privy in Belvidere, Illinois. That artifact has no actual value either but since George left that privy before 1860, it truly is the oldest “heirloom” that our family has. Nevertheless, I’m not emotionally attached to that one like I am my baby book.

5. It occurred to me that there are now only two people in the world who remember my grandma Jessie. I am the oldest of her living descendants and my cousin Shirlee is the next oldest; the rest of the cousins were wee tots when she died. I remember her mostly because she always let us sit in the rumble seat of her little car when it was parked at the curb. Seeing as she was a good woman with lots of good works to her credit, I’m sure she’d not be totally happy to know that what I remember is the fun of her old car. I have to admit it makes me wonder about my own legacy!

6. Tigger, our favorite cat of all times, got the honor of being cremated. His little ashes sit in a small cedar box in our living room. Jer and I know that he is not an heirloom to be fought over by our kids, so we are planning to take him with us when we go. I get half and Jer gets the other half. How this will be accomplished is not yet certain, and probably will be done by the kid who most understands my crazy self! I have read that humans can be buried in a pet cemetery but animals are not allowed to be buried in a human cemetery. So perhaps somewhere on “my property” – that little 4”x 6” piece of ground that I paid an arm and a leg for and that is set aside for me and me alone – that kid can surreptitiously dig a smallish hole and put my share of Tig in it. (Don’t let the security cameras watch you, though!)

Interesting that all it takes is the reading of one essay to get ruminations going about the specialness (or mundaneness) of one’s life and things. I have always said that my life just doesn’t have the panache for a good autobiography. Nevertheless, I have documented myself somewhat for my kids/grandkids and I’ve called it “My Life in Bits and Pieces.” It and the genealogy stories I’ve written about my family heritage, not any heirlooms, will be theirs. But that’s about as immortal as I’m ever going to get.