The grief of lost possessions

As the fires rage, it's so much more than just 'stuff'

With a child’s plastic net, we fished for the impossible. Over and over, again and again, we tried, scraping it along the bottom of the grimy canal. With each tiny tug, the feel of something weighty, our stomachs lifted in hope, only for them to dash back to darkness as the net emerged, empty once more.

Curious strangers passed by, asking, “have you lost something expensive? Have you lost something of value?” Our faces were red and puffy, three members of a family crying on a Birmingham canal bank. We couldn’t explain, it was too hard to. This loss was small, it was nothing but… it was also ginormous, it was everything.

They were just sunglasses. Sunglasses that were square and tortoiseshell, one arm always fell off and needed screwing back on, they were worthless. But they were hers. So, yes, they had value. No, they can’t be replaced.

I’d taken them off, wary of losing them. I was about to jump, from boat to land, the rope tied sturdily around my hand and elbow. We were on a canal boat holiday, perhaps our first, without her. I can’t remember the details. I just know a gust of wind snatched those glasses, that had been placed both carefully and carelessly, on the roof of the boat. And splash! They were gone.

We’re not supposed to care about possessions. There are more important things in life than just… stuff. It’s silly and shallow to place so much emphasis on our belongings.

But we do. I do.

Those glasses suited my mum’s face, they framed her face which was round, and pale and freckly. And so, they framed my face, which is round, and pale and freckly. I wore them and felt like I could see the world how she might see it; exist in the way she’d like me to live…

There have been other things. Mostly clothes.

An emerald green, cashmere jumper, last seen in a pub in East London, crumpled on the floor, the memory of its existence temporarily forgotten in a red wine haze.

A torn midnight blue skirt, that I wore as a dress, left behind at a party, I’d swapped its itchy fabric for an oversized man’s tee-shirt over my 100-denier tights. I traipsed home without it, then was too hungover and embarrassed to try and get it back.

A black and white scarf, that smelled of her, dusty Oscar De La Renta sprayed over with Charlie Red by an old housemate, lost… somewhere. I don’t know where. But I guess, even in my possession, that scarf was already lost: its value, the remnants of her, gone with the spritz of an aerosol can.

These items come to me sometimes, in my dreams. I am wearing them again, feeling their fabric against my skin.

They haunt me.

When I was 14 I went to a school ceilidh, and no boys wanted to dance with me. I sat, to the sides, and waited, and waited, and waited… I came home and I crawled into bed with my mum, and my tears made that jumper damp. The pain of the evening passed, in her arms.

I have always struggled to remember my mum, before her diagnosis. I can see her in her hospice bed, her face puffy with steroids, when the tumour had morphed her into someone I did not recognise. It’s always been so unfair, that my brain does this - an injustice to who she was, how wonderful she was - that these are the memories my brain plucks out and serves to me.

But her belongings exist outside of my mind. They are a physical representation of her that I can’t erase, that I could see. The jumper told me stories of that night, of her comfort. But they also told me of the parts of her I could never know, that I can now never ask about. She went to parties in that skirt, I went to parties in that skirt. She went on holidays in those sunglasses, I went on holidays in those sunglasses. They helped me to know her.

Losing them was like losing pieces of her.

There’s another belonging that haunts me. It means so much that I don’t even like describing it as a ‘belonging’ – my umbrellas are belongings, my socks are. This was… Precious. Invaluable. An artefact that held my family’s history, that carried with it how I came to be, who I was, who I am.

It was placed on my finger, at my grandma’s graveside. Her engagement ring, five diamonds, each one represented a word: Will You Be My Wife? My granddad had scrimped and saved for that ring, it was always there, on her finger, sparkling on her soft hands. Hands that held mine. She never took it off.

I took it off.

God, I hate myself for this. I hate myself for this. I hate myself for this.

I took it off.

I was at a boxing class. I didn’t want it damaged, as we sparred, laughing and punching, so I took it off, placed it in my bag at the side of the hall. When the class was over, it was gone. I searched, believe me, I searched but… Gone.

I still search. Passing pawn shop windows I’ll look, miracles happen. They do. One day it might be there, one day it might be on my finger once more.

In the days after I disintegrated. Each time I thought of what happened, what that ring represented I would have to dash – quietly, without alerting my colleagues – to be sick. I kept how I was feeling a secret, my agony only visible to the toilet bowl. I was so ashamed, of both losing the ring in the first place but also for feeling so affected by it. Why had I cried more over this ring than I had at my grandma’s funeral? Than I had at my mum’s funeral? Was it all about the diamonds? Was I that shallow?

It both is and isn’t about the diamonds. As while there are the possessions that hold only sentimental value, often the things that mean the most to us also hold actual, real-world, someone-could-steal-this-and-sell-it-in-a-pawn-shop value. Because my granddad worked for that ring, he grafted to show my grandma, in a physical way, how much she meant to him. A man of his generation, he probably found that a hard thing to express, emotionally, but materialistically, that was possible. That is what he did.

I’m thinking of all of this, as fires rip through LA: belongings, artefacts, now ash. How that must feel. Or, how it must feel to have war push you out of your home, force you to leave behind the life, and its possessions, you worked so hard for. All of that now rubble, coated in bomb dust.

Our lives matter so much more than our stuff, yes. The items I grieve, I grieve because I grieve the person that owned them before me. But, even as I look around my house now, at the things that matter that are just my own, I try to imagine how I would feel if I lost them.

My notebooks, full of my thoughts, evidence of my past, my growth and memories that my brain cannot hold.

The paper cranes my husband, and family, crafted to hang from balloons at our wedding – intricate origami work that took hours. Hours that expressed love.

The multiple copies of Death of A Salesman, I buy one each time I go into a second-hand bookshop and see the play script. They have come from all over, yellow pages, a collection of the same words, a representation of the writing I love, the sort of writing I’d love to achieve some day.

Empty diptyque candles, now used as pen and make-up brush pots. I always wanted to be the sort of woman who owned diptyque candles, these are evidence I worked hard, and, for a brief period I was.

Our belongings are so much more than just stuff. They represent who we are, who we want to be, who we worked hard to be.

After we accepted defeat, and knew the sunglasses were well and truly gone, my sister went into the bowels of the boat and emerged with a cardboard box. My mum’s ashes. And so, onto mucky brown water, just beyond the Spaghetti Junction, cars roaring, we took a handful of her and reunited her with her sunglasses, her memories of sunshine holidays and the 1970s.

One of the hardest things about living is knowing that everything we love, even ourselves, will one day become ash, become dust. Each loss reminds us of this.

We are allowed to grieve for the things that matter.

The only picture of my grandma’s ring. If you ever see it in a pawn shop, let me know (miracles happen)

What belongings mean the most to you? Have you ever lost something you loved? Let me know in the comments. And thank you so much for reading, it you’d like to help support my writing please consider becoming a paid subscriber or simply share this story, either via Substack or on social media. Thank you!

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