ABOUT THOSE SAND TOOLS - DETAILS

About the tools Chris and I were using in the picture featured in my earlier post, I just needed to add some details about its material texture. Those kid's sand box tools were made of a soft rubber material in off-white cream colour, with lovely veins of maroon and grey spiralling through the instrument's handles. The rubbery feel has a very comforting touch which was soft and cool. It helped that things such as these were made to last as much as the technology and materials of those times would permit. Eventually, after some abuse, I remember those toys breaking, and it was with some fury. This is the sensory fact: people who decidedly throw such materials are eroding the memories attached to the very things we played with, wore and used. Unless we put some of these into the chests available in our hearts and minds, as treasury of happy memories and feelings to draw upon whenever we chose, we are destroying the gift of time and experience but removing useful aids to our recollection. The ancient Jews, we read in their bible, therefore were often urged by their prophets, to recollect through rituals and gatherings, readings and bodily scars (circumcision), to constantly put before them the experience of their ancestors in their covenant with God. For this reason, I think we need to know what we ought to keep, and not indulge in the premature fear of prolonged grief to remove all memory and sensory relics of the people precious to us. What I found disgusting was the way my mother's wardrobe and personal effects were hastily removed out of the house she lived in, and the people who were doing these had spent even less of their lives with her than I. Worse was to see my father passively stand by as this was done. It remains his nature to be stoic and passive about such things and it is a mystery how he must think - for I am not sure that he can clearly distinguish between the keeping of things with memory attached to it (sentimental value) and those which are kept with the hope of future utility (utilitarian value). Memory is a very vital human aspect of being. I hope those who care less about such might someday understand what it is like to care for another who suffer from Alzhiemer's where the brain wastes away and memory is stolen as the cells die off.