Wandering nostalgias

I went through the last of my father’s possessions the other night. One was a thick plastic case filled with his poems, song lyrics, and carbon copies of submissions he sent to places like The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s.

The case was thick with dust and the papers smelled like the 1970s. (I was not alive in the ‘70s and yet I accept this as fact.)

I inhaled the 50-year-old remnants of musk, earth, and the Marlboro Reds he smoked while I thought about the catalog of unfiltered emotions that disappear when we die.

My father kept these poems and song lyrics and notes scribbled on IRS envelopes until he died, even though, as far as I knew, he didn’t write anything for the last 40 years of his life.

It was important to him, these words, and in keeping them, I felt I was honoring that importance.

And then one night, fingers blackened with dust, I sat on the floor of my living room and threw a lot of it away.

Because keeping the pile of papers has no bearing on the meaning of his life and …