Treasured Objects

. . . of the Dear Departed

We are told when we are grieving that the memories of those who have died will always be with us. Their spirit will stay with us, too. Perhaps their achievements or their accomplishments will also be their legacy, their gift to us, the living.

But to me, the objects of the dead, not their abstract essence, are just as compelling and evocative, especially when these are everyday items. For instance, I ended up with my father’s exercise mat, a white plastic pad with, written upon it in red, instructions about how to do simple workouts. It was not an attractive mat, but I used it every weekday for a decade or so. Every time I brought it out of the closet, I thought fondly of my dad. Finally, it deteriorated, developing gaping slits that revealed its yellow, spongy interior. I was sad to have to throw it out.

But I still have a red glass bottle or vase of his, possibly bought at a World’s Fair. It shows Abraham Lincoln (a hero of my father’s) in bas relief. Now I suppose my dad would rather that I read his master’s dissertation on Diderot instead of relishing a thick bottle nestled by a mullion. But for now, this mere object brings me close to him. Diderot waits for some less busy time in my life.

 My radiant mother died at 98 last year, making me an orphan. (Apparently there’s no time-limit on orphanhood: once you lose both biological parents, you’re an orphan, no matter how old you are.) My mother’s joie de vivre is a constant inspiration, and her motto, “You are the prime mover of your own life,” has frequently guided my actions. Still, I get a special thrill from her objects, especially her clothes and her jewelry. After she died, I found little cloth bags holding earrings and necklaces in various drawers and cabinets all over her house. Her jade necklace, found in an orange- striped drawstring bag, has become my favorite because it somehow seems Egyptian (her mother came from Cairo) and is also beautiful and original, just as she was.

My uncle Eddie was the economist E.J. Mishan, who taught at the London School of Economics for many years. In 1967 he published a classic, The Costs of Economic Growth. The book was based on the belief that the rosy figures for growth in real income have been accompanied by a decline in human welfare and happiness. My uncle’s book remains a persuasive, systematic demolition of the religion of growth, his theses only reinforced by the social and environmental problems of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The reviewer for the Journal of Economic Issues called the book, “one of the most instructive and entertaining books that I have ever read in the field of economics." The New York Times Magazine ran a big story on E.J. Mishan.

Yet for all his renown as an economist, many of his relatives think of him differently. Uncle Ed was a genuine non-conformist. When he wasn’t teaching or writing or body-building, he liked to take LSD and sculpt naked women. (He was the family rogue of his generation, a role I like to think I play in mine.) Upon Eddie’s death, his many sculptures were offered to his relatives, so several of my cousins and I have a rather risqué art object in our gardens or living rooms: a nude woman with prominent buttocks raised high. This was the one and only subject of his art.

How would he like to be remembered, for his theories or his sculptures? In his case, I don’t really know! I do know that the sculptures he left us, like my father’s red Lincoln bottle and my mother’s green and gold necklace, are everyday pleasures in my life, recalling the dear ones who are gone.