Dead People’s Stuff
I am surrounded by dead people’s stuff. Sometimes I feel like I live in a graveyard. Sometimes I want to live in a graveyard; especially in the fall, when the cemetery grounds are calm and gray and dreary. I would so fit in with the Addams family. I covet their house.
Next week it is Halloween (Samhain) and El Día de los Muertos. This is the time of year to reflect and honour our ancestors. I don’t have to go far to do this as half of my apartment is furnished with dead people’s stuff.
I’ve been collecting furniture from dead people all my life. (The image that comes to my mind is of me knocking on doors of old houses, Victorian mansions, Gingerbread cottages, etc, and the doors being answered by a variety of ghosts, young, old, ancient, etc. Oh, if only I could draw!)
What I mean is that I prefer to buy second-hand rather than new. I like my possessions to come with stories; even if they are only stories I make up myself.
So, though I can say most of my stuff is second-hand, only about half of it was actually acquired from dead people.
In the living room, there is Ruby’s couch. Ruby was a friend of my moms. She died just after I moved to the city. I bought the couch because it folds out into a bed. It makes my mom think of Ruby but I only see the practicability of having an extra bed.
Also, in the living room is my grandmother’s (my mother’s mother) television. My mom and sister bought it for her when she moved into the home so that she could watch her soaps in the privacy of her own room. Like me, my mother’s mother was a quiet woman. She preferred her privacy.
Yes, the television is too small for the space it is in. I like it that way!
Just down from the television is a table my grandfather (my mother’s father) made. It use to have a linoleum top. About five years ago, I borrowed my sister’s garage one summer and redid the top of the table. It involved a lot of sanding and painting and varnishing. It is not finished on purpose. The incompleteness reminds me that my grandfather chose not to teach me those types of skills because I am a woman. The incompleteness also reminds me that nothing is permanent. Life is mutable, ever-changing and even though, for me, change is not always good, I try to remember that change is necessary.
Under the table is a foot stool that I bought when my small home town’s undertaker died. He lived just down the street from us and I wanted something to remember him by. His only daughter had died young and he always made a habit to say hi and ask after us when we were gone. He was one of the good ones.
In the kitchen is Aunt Jenny’s kitchen table and chairs. I also have some of her cooking pots. She was not my Aunt Jenny. She was my pseudo step-dad’s aunt. I never met her. I heard much about her. She lived alone, but for hired help, in her own house until she died. This is how I wish to die – in my own home.
In the bedroom is Ruby’s dresser. Notice how none of my stuff matches. I am not a matchy type of soul. I like the mish mash of this and that. I like the opportunity of making what was someone else’s mine. I replaced two of the drawer pulls, on this dresser, with dragonflies. They fit well, don’t you think?
Also, in the bedroom is the last comforter my grandmother ever slept under. It is part of my winter bedding because it is down filled and warm, even though it is over fifteen years old.
That is about half of what I own.
There is also:
- a green rocking chair that I bought at a garage sale,
- the kitchen table that was my mom’s old table that I use to add more cupboard space to my kitchen,
- my bed, which was a wedding gift – go here to see my summer bedding,
- the bookcases I bought second-hand (an amazing bargain),
- the hope chest my dad gave me for my 16th birthday,
- a small bedroom cabinet that I bought new (horrors),
- And two of my mom’s old kitchen chairs.
Oh, and my roll-top desk. I’ve wanted one since forever and finally was able to find one, for an obscene price, at a church sale just after I moved back to the city. I like to think some old lady use to sit here and write long rambling letters to her loved ones.
I like being surrounded by dead people’s stuff; continuing on their stories. I hope that when I am gone someone else will use and love my stuff with the same respect.
Ghosts
I’ve worked in three museums. Once as a student, once participating in a work/study/welfare program and currently as a librarian. I’ve also been the sole employee working alone in a Victorian Bed and Breakfast in the country for a summer. All these place reportedly have ghosts.
Why have I been thinking about ghosts this week? It is, after all, the middle of July. The middle of summer. A rainy, rainy, cold summer. 
At work, this week, we were sitting in the staff room discussing our ghost(s). According to the Boss, our summer student is not giving our ghost(s) their proper respect. He pooh poohs them. Speaks to them, of them, in a confrontational manner. And then wonders why he’s the only one hearing weird noises when he works alone.
The ghost(s) don’t bother me. I’ve worked in a few places that are purportedly haunted. The Victorian B & B was gigantic – three stories high plus a basement and ten guest rooms. Usually I was the only one there as the summer I worked the place was slowly going out of business. This had nothing to do with ghosts and lots to do with the fact that it was owned by a collective. Many cooks and all that.
When I open up alone at work. I say good morning to the air, I talk to the mannequins. At the end of the day, I say goodnight before I lock up. It feels silly but I’m not convinced that our museum is devoid of spirits. We’ve been entrusted with many precious family items and they come to us saturated in memories.
What is it about ghosts? Why the fascination? What comfort do I gain by believing in ghosts? Especially considering I’ve never actually seen one just felt them; calm, smiling, content.
Is it a sign of respect? Respect for those who have come and gone. Respect for those who have entrusted us with their objects and memories.
Is it a fascination with things, with objects and how they are used, abused and passed along? Definitely yes, I love old used objects. I love to know their true stories. I love to make up new stories about them. I love to pass on the stories. They are my connection to the past. The objects are. The stories are. The ghosts are. They are a connection to my ancestors. The ones I knew who are now gone and the ones I never got to meet.
It seems to me that everything is so disposable now. Who holds on to anything anymore for more than five years let alone a lifetime? I look around my apartment and there is one item here that I’ve had since I was three and maybe a half dozen childhood toys and other items. I am not a saver. I use things until they fall apart and then replace them.
I have carelessly tossed treasures aside. I inherited my sister’s Barbies. In my twenties, seeing no one to pass them on to, I donated them all to the Salvation Army second-hand store. I love antique and second-hand stores. Gone were the siwashes my mother knitted, the clothes I sewed on my mother’s trundle sewing machine, the original Barbie that my eldest sister got one Christmas. In my defense, no one else in my family said they wanted them and I do regret giving them away. However, I also hope that the child/ren who got them loved them to death.
I have also passed on things that have been loved to death. When I was a little girl, I badly wanted a Thumbelina Newborn baby doll. I never got one. So, in my early twenties I bought one for myself. My young nephew who had just acquired a new baby sister coveted my Thumbelina. I gave her to him over the objections of my chauvinistic brother-in-law. The doll was loved to death and thus never got the chance to become haunted.
If all of my generation is like this, what will our ghosts attach themselves to now? Do cell phones have a soul? 
Will ghosts develop in the machines? Will I attach myself to my blog and haunt future viewers far into the next century? Perhaps. Readers Beware! You may never get me out of your lives after that. ; -)
Ghosts are everywhere. They watch unobserved saying “I see you” and this is what I want. I want someone, in the future, to pick up the doll I got for my third Christmas and feel the joy I felt and to say “I see you. There you are. There you were. Hello.”
Take the time to examine what you’re clinging to. Maybe you no longer need in your life something that represents security. Pass it on to someone who will either love it to death or choose to preserve it. Ghosts of the past are active. Give them their proper respect. Remember them.
Ghosts of Vimy Ridge depicts ghosts of the Canadian Corps on Vimy Ridge surrounding the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. Oil on canvas, painted in 1931. Canadian House of Commons Collection, (AN: O-4714). Artist: William Longstaff. This is a Public Domain Image.
