I was tearing up today as I watched a video about Boy George visiting the former home he grew up in. Now I am not a big Boy George fan so I really couldn’t care much about his boyhood home. I can’t say I have never bopped along to Karma Chameleon, but it wasn’t one of my favorites.

No, it wasn’t George O’Dowd that had me tearing up, it was the act of remembering melancholy things. I was in a space where thinking of the past leaves me in a state quiet resignation, and how things can symbolize that. Pictures, couches, wallpaper, paint, or art, amongst many other things that memories hang from.

When my Grandmother died as grandchildren we got to take a keepsake. I chose a picture of Christ at the last supper that she always had hanging somewhere in her house.

It was not a particularly nice painting, and by then I was at the very least an agnostic. So you might ask why?

It reminded me of her and how she loved us. Once when we lived in Regina we were at a public pool close to my Grandma and Grampas house. It was sunny and hot and I felt like I got sunstroke. My brother and I walked to their house and my Grandma had me lay down on her big, floral patterned couch, after which she put a cloth soaked in cold water on my forehead.

I can remember hearing my Grandpa’s, and my uncles voice coming from the kitchen. They were playing cards. They didn’t care about us, just Grandma.

It’s not really the thing is it? It’s the memory hanging from it.