I’m Not Sentimental, I Just Keep Everything That Matters

Mother’s Day edition: on emotional archaeology, memory, and the suitcase I still haven’t unpacked.

When my mom died, I went back to her house and did the thing you’re supposed to do: sort, box, decide. Most of it felt impossible. Some of it felt weirdly easy. And somewhere in between, I started filling an extra suitcase I bought just for this—the kind you don’t want to use for clothes because it feels like it should carry something heavier.

I haven’t really lived at my mom’s house since 1993, but opening those closets and drawers was like stepping back into some part of myself I’d left behind. I found the obvious things: family heirlooms, old concert shirts, way too many photos from way too many eras. But also: the underground newspaper we made in high school to stir up minor chaos. My dad’s high school report cards and his military paperwork. Baseball cards. Concert ticket stubs. A mug shaped like a bunny. Decorative plates I forgot we ever had. My bronzed baby shoes. A yearbook or two. The E.T. head from a costume my mom made when I was seven—just the head, no body, which somehow makes it funnier and weirder. I remember wearing it once for Halloween and barely being able to see. She made it from scratch, of course.

There was also a stack of flyers from when she worked as a professional clown. (Yes, really. She was good at it.) Alongside them: her balloon figure instruction manuals, a few well-used cookbooks, and a small stash of old driver’s licenses—each one more dated than the last, like a flipbook of forgotten fashion choices.

Not everything fit in the suitcase. Some of it ended up in boxes, which my brother’s kindly storing for me. I’ve got a year to pick them up, though I live in Germany, so that deadline’s a little ambitious.

It’s not about being sentimental, exactly. I just think some things carry stories in their shape. In their wear. In the way they sat in a drawer for thirty years and still showed up looking familiar. I don’t want to put them on display. I just want to know they’re close by.

Everything still smells like her. Like her house. Every time I open the drawer it’s in, it’s there—the exact scent I didn’t realize I remembered so clearly. It hits all at once and fades too fast, but it shows up every time. Like it’s still doing its job.

That scent, those things, that feeling—they’re what I’ve got now. And on days like today, it’s enough to feel her close.