Ring Bearer// Memory Bearer

Inspired by: "Things become bearers of memory, of information, especially when enhanced by stories that expand their capacity to carry meaning"

-Tiya Miles

Notes on the importance of objects as collective memory, intergenerational love, and markers of how loss takes similar forms through time

2024

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sometimes an object becomes more than itself

_

That slip of metal was all that would be left

A man and his son

Their son

A father, a brother, a friend

A child whose face was just fully formed

racing, jumping, leaping

A boy who new how to love having a body

A boy who knew the joy of being physical on this world

—

35 years young, 38 years later

the last of his body disappears

Not gone, just lost

Given back to the earth

Gone back home

_

That small golden circle; two hearts intertwined wrapped around his child

Now a child bearer, home maker

His child

Their hearts intertwined, wrapped around each other

enveloped in a love that knows no time, suffers no loss, feels a memory clearer than the mind’s eye’s aging sight

-

It has long moved from it's position as wedding ring

A simple title

it lives now as the physical embodiment of their lives

More everlasting than a tombstone, covered and lost to the corn

Planted to cover those fields of blood

A "clean " slate

As if there exists a present divorced from the past

And it returned to the ground serendipitously, senselessly

Another link cracked

in a chain of memory

-

We call a second mourning after a dark night

A betrayal : How could you leave me

A denial : You are too grand to be gone, larger than life

"You-

You are more than a body"

A hopelessness : "if you have left me now; Earthside is not where we will meet again"

-

Acceptance? How. No. Never

A brave face turned toward reality, an unknown future without you both by my side

Two hearts intertwined

past life

through death

Gone from my fingertips

The tear that left my eye

As I look steadily ahead