A lone face shield hangs in a coat hook behind our bedroom door. It has been there since the first time I brought it home. The fact that equipment such as this have been quite fashionable (though not in a glamourous sense) during the rage of the pandemic, that lone face shield hangs there, but not as a grim reminder of the period. It was the last thing ever that our eldest brother gave me, just a few hours before he died in 2021.
In the hours between receiving that gift and his last breath, I’ve not really cared much about where I put it. Since I’ve no need of it, already having one of my own, I just thought, that cozy nook would be just the perfect spot. Later that evening, when I received a call that he had suddenly passed on, I had risen from the bed and that face shield was the first thing I saw as I left the bedroom.
Seeing it again this morning, while I searched where I hung my trusty belt, I had thought, how many of us normal(?) people have keepsakes such as this; ones that secretly hold a sad history?
Seeing it again has reminded me that by far, I have been silently amassing so many in my possession without being aware of it. I’ve an antique mirror from the 20s or 30s, owned by my late Ate Pilar which at one time adorned our tiny room in Ponciano where she brought me up. I still have my mother’s reading glasses, the one I forgot to return one insignificant evening when I used it to proof-read one of her many articles; and then our Pop’s worn-out Florsheim, the very one he insisted I wear on special occasions (but did not)…Or my late sister’s tiny night light, ones you clipped to your cap if you wanted to read inside a bus or a plane at night time. And the list goes on.
All these I have are however nothing compared whenever we come visit the old residence in Bajada. The house itself speaks and holds thousands of memories. Sitting in just one space evokes replays of past scenes. As one walks from one room to the next, it’s as though old voices re-stream old conversations in your head, as though one were tiptoeing between two worlds. Not a trip, mind you. It’s just the way things are whenever I’m in my fondly-termed house of spirits.
I must’ve read somewhere that we all leave indelible prints on every material object we come in contact with, no matter how minute they may be. Whether these be traces of DNA or spiritual smudges, I don’t really care. The fact that they somehow appear to reach out and invoke toinks in our heartstrings, or a definition of such, is just fine by me. Once in a while, it’s dopamine enough when one hits the pause button and sinks back into the past, just to resurface again and breathe lightly and think it’s ok.
