Sunday, March 21

 
 
YEAR:  2021 | Tags:  | | |
 
 
 
 
 

Auo’s room, 14:00

 
 

I don’t think I know “the correct way” to deal with all the stuff that gets left behind when a child dies. I know that some people manically throw everything away as soon as they can, and that other people keep the child’s room as a museum, or maybe a temple. We have tried to do neither. We have tried to leave things until they feel ready to change, and then change them.

This has proved a long slow process but how else could it have gone? We wait until we feel the time arrive and then we decide what to do. The time arrives when it does. This process has moved at a different pace for every different thing that once belonged to Auo.

Today we have decided that the time has arrived to move the small set of shelves that Auo used to use to display her Sylvanian family, her Hot Wheels collection, and her Aku Ankka pocket books. I photograph the Sylvanian room before we box it up and store it.

The room has changed organically in the last seven years. It has gradually become a reading room. We notice that Auo should have helped us do this. She should have sat there chatting about how she used to play with these, and deciding whether to keep them, give them away, or throw them out.

Instead we do the deciding, and it feels dispiriting and I guess it always will.