Sentimentality is Haunted

Keepsakes that we pocket after it’s all over.

This is how I remember the following conversation. I’m sharing a pot of homemade mushroom soup with a love when I tell her about the iridescent way we create keepsakes. We double over in laughter because despite dedicating years of my life to English literature, I forget that there are words for things.

“Listen! We can ascribe meaning to objects! Places! Sights! You could have the same mug as someone else, the same rings, same sweater, see the same sky, but you’re able to colour it with your own meaning! Isn’t that great? How we make things ours? How we get the last word?”

“So… Sentimentality?”

A comical pause.

“Ah yes. That.”

— Conversation between best friends, Winter: 2020.

The items and keepsakes that we hold dear are all echoes of a noteworthy time. Our days, things, are constantly bygones. The meals we love, we recreate because they end too soon. The books that have struck us, we share with others to vicariously re-experience as their first-read. The films that mirror our wants, we try to retrace through reading reviews. We’re constantly bridging connections with things and generating dates of birth for those connections.

We pocket what we can, especially the small things. Sentimentality is a rebellion against time. The rebelling happens when the seconds keep ticking forward, and you’re not quite finished…