My hands

One of the tragedies of curiousity is that when you are curious enough to ask the question, the people who can answer it are dead. That is the case with my grandmother María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena who died in 1969 in Veracruz when she was 77. One of those infrequent miracles is that my Rosemary was able to meet her while she was alive.

My memory of where she was born is spotty. I believe that she was born in Manila but she studied school in Valencia.

This morning when I woke up at 10 am, after a bout of insomnia, I looked over to the window where I have a healthy bougainvillea that was Rosemary’s. I do my best to keep it alive feeling that something of her is alive in that plant. That got me to thinking of the problem of all the possessions that I have in my small Kits home and what I can do to alleviate the problem of having my daughters sifting through them when I die.

Rosemary in Buenos Aires 23 March 2017

My thoughts drifted to contrasting the plant on the bedroom table, the plants in my garden with the objects in this scan. What are they?

The bracelet was my grandmother’s mourning band (silver and black coral) that she wore for a year when my grandfather Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena died in 1918 at age 30. The silver goblet was my grandmother’s school drinking glass. Years ago I used it as my “toothbrush glass” in the bathroom. The little container was her school sewing kit. For me these objects are valuable because I knew the woman who owned them and who was one of my mentors until she died. Will my daughter’s find any value in these? What will they do with them?

On my father’s side I have a very large wool Argentine flag that was his from at least 1938. Who will want it? Can I just put it in the garbage? Occasionally I sip my mate from his mate gourd which dates to the 30s. 

All the above, boils down to that saving what is alive is far more valuable than that which belonged to the dead.

Am I right? What would my Rosemary have told me? I keep her shoes in our closet. Would she have kept mine?