Giving Away The Memories

On the 17th floor of my building, lives an old man.

He does not live alone. He stays with his two grown up sons. Their wives. Their kids. It is a big family. There should not be any reason to be lonely. Or feel empty. But I think he does. Every evening when he goes for a walk, I can see it in his eyes. He is lonely and sad. And this feeling has nothing to do with his large family.
He may have a lot of people in his life but the person who matters the most, his wife, died a few months ago. And ever since, he has not been the same.

We all have different ways of coping with grief. Some cry. Some deal with it with dry eyes. Our ways may be different but we all feel this profound sadness. We all feel a deep emptiness that descends on us when we lose a loved one. This old man I know, does not keep his grief bottled up. He talks about her to people he meets in the elevator, in the park, in the grocery store. He tells us about the wonderful years he had with his wife. His helplessness towards the end of her illness. His relief when he realized she has passed away and was incapable of feeling any more pain. He talks a lot. And sympathetic neighbours, some strangers, some not, listen to this old man's ramble.

Few days back, he called me while I was walking in the park.
"Do you tie your hair?" When I said that I do, he handed me a shiny object.
"Keep this then, it will look good on you." I loosened my palm to find a rather tacky looking hair clip. And I knew. I knew instantly that he has begun the painful process of going through her stuff. Bits of items that were once precious to her. Hair clips, bags. CDs. Stuff that he will never use in his life, stuff that perhaps his daughters in law do not want. He has started handing them over to utter strangers. These things are no longer useful to him. But he cannot bear to throw them away.. So he gives them away, hoping some stranger will honor these silly items and somewhere, somehow, his wife's belongings and with them her memories, will live on.

I turned and walked back to my car. Wondering what should I do with this clip? To keep or to not? I glanced at the clip once again. I know I will never use this clip. It is neither pretty nor serviceable. Moreover, it does not even hold any sentimental value for me. What will I do with this? Perhaps I will give it away to my domestic help. Or I will give it to a street kid in need of a hair pin. I stopped for a second, and looked back once to see the old man. The very next moment, I felt tears crawling down my cheeks as I see the old man sitting on the bench outside his house, staring at the picture of his wife. That very moment I decided what I would do with the tacky hair clip.

I went home that evening, after dinner, locked myself in my room, turned my lights dim, pulled out my diary, and “told” my diary what has happened. Again, I felt tears trickling down my cheeks. As I get done with it, I decided to stick the hair clip with it. Just so that I’ll never lose it. So that I’ll remember this day in life for the time to come, I know, no matter what I do, I know the lady will live in her husband's mind. Forever.

As I got my eye lashes to meet that night, I caught a glance of the diary, lying on my study desk. Just then I thought to myself, just because you get rid of something does not mean you lose the memories.