Recently, we watched the movie Nostalgia. It begins in a cluttered room full of the stuff of the widower’s life where the man sits passively. An insurance appraiser comes to visit, hired by the widower’s granddaughter, to appraise the stuff, to see if there is anything of value worth saving, value meaning money.
The appraiser reports that there are a few things worth not all that much. When he asks the granddaughter whether or not any of the photographs might have a value other than money, she never answers the question.
In the next vignette, the appraiser meets a widow amid the rubble of her house, burned to the ground a few days before. She had time to save only a few items from destruction, pieces of jewelry and a baseball signed by Ted Williams in the 1940s. She is, naturally, distraught over her losses, especially the photographs.
The baseball was a family artifact, passed along from grandfather to father, intended to be passed along to the father’s son. Everyone involved understood the baseball to be more than a ball and a signature. The widow had not yet given it to the son but intended to one day.
But, something prompts her to consider selling the ball through a shop in Las Vegas that trades in collectibles. Ultimately, she does, for something over $60,000. She seems relieved, not by the sum but by not having the ball anymore.
The shopkeeper then leaves, bound for his now-deceased parents’ home, where he meets up with his sister. They are about to begin to disassemble the place, starting in the attic, chock full of things that meant something to the parents, a few triggering memories for the man and his sister, including photographs.
The sister’s daughter comes, asking permission to go away with the weekend with her girlfriends. The mom tries to persuade the daughter to stay and go through the attic stuff with them. The girl gingerly says, “this stuff has no meaning to me. It’s your space, not mine.”
Thus admonished, the mom agrees to let the daughter go with her friends.
On the way, the friend’s car crashes and the daughter is killed.
The film made us think. When do the things we keep for nostalgic purposes become clutter, either for us or for those who will face the task of taking apart our places?
“A picture is worth a thousand words but being there is worth ten thousand pictures.” I spoke these words at Grossmont Christian Church in Spring 1966. I was talking about my trip aboard the Seven Seas, the college-credit program that circumnavigated the globe in a semester. The sentence might be the only original thing I ever have spoken, appropriately pretentious for an 18 year old and achingly obvious.
Taking pictures is a common activity for travelers. The possibilities for picture-taking offered by Smart phones has made all of us more profligate photographers.
Phone camera photos are digital. What about the pre-digital-era pictures we save? Why and for whom? What do we do with them when we begin to downsize our homes?
One of my first About Aging pieces wondered what should be done with the National Geographics we all seemed to find stashed by our parents. Turning these into trash seemed almost sacrilegious. When the pictures are ones you have taken and the destinations you have visited are your own, what do you do? The shelf below our TV, with multiple photo albums, is a regular reminder of the dilemma.
We took those pictures because we wanted to remember. We look at the pictures…almost never. We have disposed of hundreds of photos in the last few years yet hundreds more remain, and a thumb drive in our safety deposit box is our insurance against losing our digital ones accidentally.
We continue to take pictures. Some we have printed and framed. A few of those serve as prompts for conversations beginning “remember when” or “that reminds me of.”
The movie showed the weight nostalgia can be. We saw similar weight when we took apart Mom’s house. We recognize the weight underneath our TV.
To see photos and things as prompts for remembering is not a bad thing. Being there is worth ten thousand pictures but if you cannot be there, the images sometimes do stimulate fond sensory memories.
At a memorial service for a colleague who died young, a slide show about her life ended with a photograph of her taken from above. She is looking up into the camera with sparkling eyes and a smile that blends joy and puckishness. It captures her well.
She is no longer where she once was, available for a hug. She is, however, indelibly fixed in the minds of her friends by that photo, all the senses engaged in the memory.
Beyond that group of her friends and family, the picture has no meaning, however. The daughter in the attic was wise.
People of a Certain Age, the dilemmas remain. Each of us will address them differently as did the folks in the film. For now, perhaps it is sufficient to regard the photos and the stuff as alternate ways of being there.
Daniel E. White
August 12, 2018