When the mortuary went out of business, my grandmother asked if she could buy some of the unwanted furniture. She brought home a pea-green velvet couch circa 1930s that's now located in the house's entryway. It used to be the receiving couch for the mortuary and when I use it, I imagine the grief-stricken people who had just lost a relative huddled together speaking in low voices or maybe not saying anything at all.
 |
| "The Death Couch" |
I wonder what happened on that couch. Who sat there? What was said? What memories were made? Who was being remembered?
In college my friends and I used to play a game where we'd try to see how far back we could trace the furniture we had inherited. (Great party game, right?) My ex-boyfriend had a dirty navy blue couch covered in a terrible green, yellow, and red plaid pattern that had been donated to him by a Communist who said he had gotten it from someone who had gone to jail whose mother had given it to him when she wanted to update the furniture (or something like that). We drank beer and played this game until I'm sure that we started making up stories about the origins of our furniture. (Believe me--you'd be this bored during a Wyoming winter too).
My family, especially my grandparents who were both history students, has given me a deep sense of the individual's connection to places and people long gone. My grandmother always said that our families' stories were our stories. That it was our duty to carry their memories with us. Those memories leak into my perception of life as I experience it. The same ex-boyfriend I mentioned earlier in the post used to talk about "the democracy of the dead," referring to valuing the experiences of the dead in addition to the living.
That's something I adore about Hispanic culture: respect for and remembrance of passed relatives. Every year I make altars for my mother and grandmother to celebrate The Day of the Dead and I often find peace in the ritual (though my family still thinks it's a little bit strange...). Do you have any special traditions regarding the deaceased?
That connection to the dead, to imagining what their lives were like, inspires me to write: to remember and re-imagine. To sit on a couch and guess at who'd sat in that spot last, how we might have understood each other had we met, what we would have talked about. If I can't get my answers from history, at least I can make it up.
My family, especially my grandparents who were both history students, has given me a deep sense of the individual's connection to places and people long gone. My grandmother always said that our families' stories were our stories. That it was our duty to carry their memories with us. Those memories leak into my perception of life as I experience it. The same ex-boyfriend I mentioned earlier in the post used to talk about "the democracy of the dead," referring to valuing the experiences of the dead in addition to the living.
That's something I adore about Hispanic culture: respect for and remembrance of passed relatives. Every year I make altars for my mother and grandmother to celebrate The Day of the Dead and I often find peace in the ritual (though my family still thinks it's a little bit strange...). Do you have any special traditions regarding the deaceased?
That connection to the dead, to imagining what their lives were like, inspires me to write: to remember and re-imagine. To sit on a couch and guess at who'd sat in that spot last, how we might have understood each other had we met, what we would have talked about. If I can't get my answers from history, at least I can make it up.
