The Quiet Turning

At one level it feels simple. A photo, a letter, something small and ordinary can hold a whole moment. They steady us. They connect us to people we have loved, to moments that shaped us, to earlier versions of ourselves. There is something comforting in that, a sense that life has not just passed through us unnoticed.

And yet, when I stay with it a little longer, it feels more layered than that. Letting go does not always feel like letting go of a thing. It can feel like letting go of a moment, or a person, or even a version of ourselves that we are not quite ready to release. And if I am really honest, there is something of fear in it. Fear of forgetting. Fear of losing something that once meant everything. Fear of change. I can feel that in myself, that quiet pull to hold on.

I have spent much of my adult life without a partner, and I find myself wondering if that has shaped this. Whether the objects I have kept have, in some way, held more for me. Not more in value, but more in meaning. As if they have quietly witnessed parts of my life. As I write this, I am looking at a ceramic bowl with an elephant on the lid. Rustic, colours of Africa, but that is not really why it matters. I bought it in York whilst visiting a true friend who had recently moved there. I missed her. I loved her. I have not spoken to her in over twenty five years, and yet she is still here in this moment. Ruth. Ruff, as my children called her. A source of strength and love to me at a time when I needed it. The memory of her feels held in that object, and it makes me pause. Is the object the witness, or is it simply holding the echo of something that was already lived?

Over the past few weeks I have been clearing in stages. Not all at once, it did not feel like something to rush. At first I just sat with each item. Then I came back again, more slowly. I held it, noticed what came up, and then, when it felt right, I said goodbye. Quietly. Thanking it for the memory it had carried for me. I had kept everything. Birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards, my school reports, the children’s first drawings, their early attempts at writing their names. All of it held in a trunk. A trunk that was rarely opened, but always there. It filled it completely. That trunk has now been emptied. It is ready to hold practical things for the move. But before that, I took my time. I thanked my daughter for her cards, for her words over the years, for all that love held in paper and ink, and then I let them go. I found an old handmade Valentine’s card from junior school. Thank you Wayne, wherever you are now. That small moment stayed. It made me feel special, and in some quiet way, it still does.

As I did this, I noticed something shift. Those objects had been holding the memories for me, or at least that is what it felt like, but the memories themselves had never really left. Across many faiths and traditions there is a similar gentle pointing towards this. Not in a way that asks us to reject things, but to notice how we hold them. In Buddhism and Hindu teachings there is that sense of not clinging, of allowing things to be meaningful without becoming weighed down by them. In Christianity there is something about placing what matters beyond what can be held, into something that endures. In Islam there is a quiet reminder that what we have is entrusted to us for a time, to be cared for but not grasped too tightly. In Judaism there is a deep respect for remembrance, not in the object itself, but in how it is carried forward and lived. When I sit with that, it does not feel like I am being asked to let go of what matters. It feels more like being invited to trust that what matters is not lost when the object is no longer there.

And still, the question remains. If I do not have the thing, will I still remember in the same way, or will the memory soften, become less sharp? And if it does, is that really a loss, or simply that it has settled somewhere deeper, somewhere quieter within me?

There is a part of me that feels drawn to living more simply, with less stuff, just what I need. Although I have a sense I will not fully know what that is until I arrive wherever it is I am heading. What I do know is that I do not need objects to remind me that I have been loved, or thought about, or held in someone else’s world. That has already happened.

And perhaps that is the gentle shift.

That the witnessing was never in the object.

It was in the living of it.