The Emotional Mass of Items

In Wendy's Car

So many of the tens of thousands of items in my life have emotional connections to them. I think of this just two days after leaving my late wife’s car at an auto dealership, having traded it in for a yet-to-be-delivered new one.

She got this car before she met me and it became our car. I should have replaced it a long time ago—it had been partially disabled for nine months!

It took me such a long time to let go of it because of all the emotional energy it stored for me. In that way, it was a talisman.

There was no touching good-bye scene at the car lot between me and this little Honda. I cleaned it out, closed the door, and walked away from it. It wasn't difficult at all. The fear of severing that emotional connection was worse than the act of severing itself.

In most cases, we love not the object, but what it symbolizes in our head. Digital photos can stand in as links to those memories when the object no longer adequately fills its functional purpose in our lives.