Amongst the Ashes
Deborah Gray is selling the family home - she spends an evening reflecting on the past and burning old documents
It’s dark and the room is filled with that particular chill that emanates from stone walls that have been standing since the first Charles came to the throne. I’m sitting by the cavernous chimney warmed by the heat generated from burning personal documents; too many to shred. It’s time to leave this family house and find a cottage for one.
How many families have warmed their field-worn fingers at this hearth over those intervening years? And how many evenings has my own family gravitated to its welcoming glow? Of course, we have photos of the ones featuring glistening wrapping paper, melting Roses chocolates and satiated bodies crowned with Christmas cracker hats. But it’s the ones unrecorded that seem most significant tonight, as another mortgage statement crinkles to black dust. Insignificant evenings spent watching Star Trek movies with a box of Maltesers. Or cradling a tiny child. Maybe chattering friends with complexions ruddied by the combination of firelight and ‘rectory red’ walls; perhaps a wee toddy in hand too. Times I took for granted. How to leave it all behind?
It’s easy to become maudlin thinking about the past but I’m determined to keep this in check – warm thoughts, not tears.
Another bank statement flares, the debits kindling memories of a family holiday in Sicily. I can picture the children resenting yet another site of ancient ruins, we’re hiding in the deserted museum unable to face the blistering mid-August walk to the super-heated car. A case of Roman glass tear bottles draws our attention. Mourners once filled these ‘lachrymatory’ with their tears and placed them in tombs as symbols of love. Some women were hired to cry, those howling the loudest and producing the most tears were the best paid. Our children, of course, break the silence with competitive mock crying – it’s time to leave.
Tear bottles made a reappearance in Victorian Britain when the tears collected were allowed to evaporate using special stoppers. When the bottles dried out, the mourning was over. I have found a silver spoon, scissors and the body of a headless cat in the lithe and plaster walls of this old house, sadly I've not discovered any lachrymatory. There could be one though, hidden here in the walls of this room. Other people moving on from other lives. Do the tears ever truly dry out?
My piano has already gone from its spot across the room, leaving only imprints in the carpet. The sofa next maybe. One of our marriage's many compromises: it being the one that neither my husband nor I disliked. It’s destined for a women’s relief charity, along with other furniture. At least it will have a new lease of life.
There’s a delight in the cleansing that goes with a move. Our abundance is shocking when you think about ordering boxes. Selecting what to take is laborious. If I go for the ‘does it bring you joy’ approach, then there will be no Dyson vacuum cleaner in the next home, no loo brush and the printer, dammit, that goes – that only brought me tears of frustration, ones I don’t want to bottle.
Do I have a responsibility to take with me things that brought my husband joy? That’s a tricky one. The draft of a letter in his handwriting flares and turns to ashes.
Everything that might have a value to someone else will be donated. I imagine the faces of the good souls in Oxfam as they unpack my ephemera, their censure prevents me from over-sharing, several of them are friends, after all. They tell me that most people pack something good at the top of the box to save face at the handover. Guilty as charged: a pristine hardback Herodotus hiding a well thumbed copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary! Perhaps to keep my dignity I should scatter my donations across other towns.
The brass coffee table is illuminated for a moment by the flaming guarantee for the boiler. We haggled for that table in Cairo. I remember that my son always offered to clean it when he wanted to watch the football; FYI extensive research reveals that tomato ketchup works best. And the Italian sewing tables which double as music boxes, they’ll come. My kids hated those. I relish the prospect of haunting the next generation with their creepy music, reminiscent of a gothic movie soundtrack. I’ve found it is most effective if you set them to play in the darkened room, at bedtime.
And that’s the key, I think, as an insurance document turns red and dances in the grate. It’s the laughter not the tears that I’ll pack in bubble wrap. Forget the objects that other people might see as valuable, For me it’s those things that remind me of people and places, of laughter and love. No one can erase memories, but as anyone who goes on a Dialect writing course knows, a few prompts help.
By the way, I will take the Dyson and the printer. But maybe I'll treat myself to a new loo brush.
Deborah Gray is a food and travel writer whose work has appeared in publications including National Geographic Food, Discover Britain, The Guardian and YourLifeisaTrip and has written numerous cookbooks. Her memoire writing has appeared in Good Housekeeping and Psychologies. Deborah lives in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, where she will remain after the move.
You can find her on www.deborahgray.co.uk and on Twitter @wordswork
