While the apartment has been vacant since October, it has been a Herculean task disassembling a person’s life. It tears at every piece of your core. I guess I’ve been resisting it quite a bit—you know, closing the door for the final time, which I did last night at around 11:30. When I locked the deadbolt behind me, I found myself releasing a sort of gasp: a gasp of relief that all the work for the most part was done, or a blast of sadness that I was responsible for erasing yet another trace of David’s existence from the surface of this earth.
As you piece through somebody’s life, you uncover more questions that will likely never be answered. A scrap piece of paper with a first name and number, a ring of keys that don’t seem to fit any locks you are aware of. Why was this picture or that card kept and others thrown away? What to do with fifty pairs of size 8.5 shoes?
Since October, I have spent a cumulative week+ living in David’s apartment, going through his personal things and sorting out what to do with his “stuff.” It has been an emotional challenge to know you are trashing or donating something he held closely to him but has no use or place in anybody else’s lives. We’ve repainted over dents and nicks that have no longer have a story behind them. I’ve thrown away things that he would probably have scowled at me for throwing away, but what options are there, really? I’ve probably donated something that had tremendous value and brought something home that meant nothing at all.
When you deconstruct somebody’s life, there is very little by way of a user’s manual, and you make your best interpretation of what you think they would or may have wanted. You are rarely provided the tools to do the job at hand, so you improvise along the way. However, you do so at a great cost to your own self.
Along the way, people have asked for this or that, and for the most part I try to be as accommodating as possible. I’ve been asked a few times, “Well, what are you taking? What are YOU keeping?”
I’m keeping the memories I have. As I made my way through the inventory, there were very few practical physical things that yelled out “David” to me. Many of the things that did resonate with me also meant a lot to other people, and I felt selfish when I thought I would actually want that for me. For the most part, I parted ways with those things so that I could share David with all the other people who loved him.
When I closed that door, I thought of the interactions with the little things, and I think the things I keep are responsible to forever remind the world that David did walk this earth and that—while cut short by his struggles and situation—there was such a large mark made indelibly upon the experiences many of the people reading this blog had when he was here.
I picked up a pint glass the other day. My favorite pint glass had broken the other day, and I realized when I picked up the pint glass to take a sip, it was David’s Knicks glass. My favorite glass—the first “First Place” trophy glass I had won racing busted and was replaced by David’s favorite Knicks glass. A fair trade? I don’t know… nobody will have known my win that day, but I will remember David’s love for the Knicks. In time, the logo will fade with each dishwasher cycle, and it will most likely be broken and fade into the ether as all things do.
As I closed that door last night, the pain from my freshly done tattoo reminded me of the pain that David had suffered those last days in his apartment. It was now empty, with a fresh coat of paint. It was no longer David’s apartment. It was just a moment in time that hosted something that got broken and was eventually lost.
