Associate Editor Taylor Byas: Writing about grief is always a challenge, as one struggles to strike the balance between sentiment and craft. But Anita Wright Collins finds that middle ground effortlessly in her essay, “Inventory of Your Things as I Empty Your House.” This piece moves seamlessly between fact and feeling, illustrates how objects are often the most powerful doorways into memories. Cataloguing the belongings of a loved one becomes a transformative act, one in which the loved one is rebuilt from the fragments of their things, is alive again among the wreckage.
To hear Anita read her essay, click here:
Inventory of Your Things as I Empty Your House
Beautiful teacup number one. Beautiful teacup number two. The beige marble cigarette box from your trip to Italy. The Depression-era glass bowl that appeared after I left home. The Hummel figurine I bought you with my first bonus, even though I hated the cupcake sweetness of it. I couldn’t wait for you to open my present, but when you did, you only said that my brother gave you a bigger one.
Empty tea tins one through six. The Delft blue vase, smaller than my hand and yours, because our hands were the same. We were the same, physically anyway. Same height and shape, same upturned nose and outsize smile, same big round eyes, except yours were brown and mine are blue.
The plate with the canal skaters and the plate with the thatch-roofed farmhouse. The silver souvenir spoons, minus the one with the windmill at the top with blades that turn. That one lived in the sugar bowl and has since been claimed by my daughter, who has our nose but is taller than us and auburn-haired. She is comfortable in her skin, as you and I never were.
Two Grecian milk-glass vases, one slate blue and one black, which eBay says are Jim Beam promo items from the seventies. As a kid I was not allowed to touch them. Also off-limits was the bottle of clear liquor with bits of gold floating in it and a tiny ballerina in a glass bubble at its center. As a kid I would sneak the bottle out of the cabinet and wind the music box underneath to watch the ballerina turn. It broke during your last move.
Fifty-six crocheted doilies, individual as snowflakes. The nuns taught you to crochet in school, along with knitting, sewing, embroidering, and lace making. You were a master with a needle, but you never stopped resenting that you did needlework while your brothers studied math and science.
One pair of handmade leather shoes, dusty now, beside rows of shoes built for comfort. You who wore high heels so long, you said wearing flats made you feel like you were falling backward. The pencil skirts and slim pants in navy and black. Thirty-seven silk scarves, some from the sixties that look brand new. The pair of fuzzy pink socks, given to you by your favorite caregiver after you’d forgotten, with so much else, how much you disliked pink.
The handful of books you owned, including Jane Eyre, which you read on the plane the last time you flew home to the Netherlands. You, who read only decorating magazines, decided to start reading novels after my first story was published, a sad story about a man diving in a dark lake. You read my story and when you lifted your eyes, you said you felt cold and wet. I thought that was the start of something.
Anita Wright Collins lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband, songwriter Wes Collins. She won the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, and the winning story appeared in the North Carolina Literary Review. She was a Cos Barnes Fellow in Fiction for the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities.
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