Guilty

It’s odd to be reminded so viscerally of someone’s passing after such a lengthy amount of time, but someone managed to do just that to me today. It started innocently. I had just met with my faculty advisor just hours previously to determine the eight texts I would be using as guides for my writing during the coming semester. Did I mention I had just started my two-year odyssey to acquire a Master of Fine Arts degree? A decision long coming, I had finally applied and was accepted into a program I genuinely hope will finally set me on the path to the life I’ve always imagined. Of the eight texts, I was already in possession of several of them. One of which, I was sure, had been tucked away in the modest area we’d been allotted for storage. There were other things in the rudimentary three by four by six box: a couple of chairs from the dining room table we had sat around as children, a box fan of dubious reliability, and several boxes that freed up some space. Eager to make sure I had the books, I went up to the storage room to retrieve them. Only the unit I was sure my stuff was in was open: no padlock, and the clasp had evidence of being altered. I wondered if I had picked the wrong unit, and tried my key on the only padlock that it could have worked on: no luck. That odd feeling of panic – the cold that takes over the hands, the watery feeling in the bowels – took over as I moved from unit to unit trying the key I had. I thought instantly that somehow, someway, the storage unit I had filled with my things had been forced and the contents discarded. Just months previously, the building had been bought by a private owner and, just weeks later, the shit-for-brains neighbor next to me left. Both events seemed providence of good things to happen. My neighbor, an ill-tempered, adolescent in his mid-20’s had a proclivity of playing on-line games with a head-set to communicate with his fellow gamers with no awareness that we could hear every word he screamed. I returned to my apartment and, grasping at hope, thought that perhaps the key I had that did not work in the padlock was just faulty. Which would necessitate the removal of the lock and a new one put on. I sent off an email to the owner, asking if he had indeed cleaned out any units since his ownership had commenced. He had. The only unit he had seen fit to do anything to was mine. He operated under the assumption that the tenant of apartment three would use storage unit three, having no knowledge of – nor inquiring about in case this assumption proved specious – the agreement the other tenants had come to regarding the use of the units despite which number appeared on the door. So he threw my stuff away. I find it fascinating that the former tenant, instead of saying ‘what stuff?’, gave the landlord full permission to dispose anything in the unit. My stuff. That, however, is not the worst aspect of this situation: I’m not actually sure what was in the unit. I did not catalogue what was in there, nor did I make any sort of note, the entire contents being less that a dozen items. There could have been a box of my mother’s stuff we divvied up when she died eight years ago. That is how, through a series of unrelated events, you set the stage for a person to feel, even on the most microscopic level, the very same loss and pain they felt the day they lost their loved one. The guilt of not even knowing just what I had stored in that cubicle – and now, lies buried in some landfill – sits gnawing in my psyche. Of course I feel guilty. Losing someone you love puts an edict on your mind, that you will always hold them closely, that everything they did for you will always be foremost in your mind. And then, one day, your attention slips and a piece is irrevocable taken from you. It is as if your feelings for that person were not strong enough, not deeply ingrained enough for you to protect their memory.  Just what else will you lose in the life? What other things you shared with those you love - the memories, the objects, the evidence of your flight through this life - will be scraped aside in our mad dash to the finish line?