A Remnant of the Past

What do we owe to the past?

 

My former husband recently gave me a little book bound in soft leather. He'd found it among his papers as he was sorting and weeding.

 

The little book is a prayer book. On the inside front cover is my name and my address in Montpellier, France, where I lived when I was 19. This prayer book, which I have no memory of, is now in my hands. Am I supposed to know what to do with it? Within its pages is a "holy card"—a bookmark of thin cardboard edged in gold, with a religious image printed on one side. On the back of the holy card in my prayer book is an inscription saying that the book was presented to me by the Alain family in Montpellier.

 

I have no memory of this family. I did spend Christmas Day that year with a kind Catholic family. I don't remember their name, but I do remember finding a pearl in one of the oysters I ate at that Christmas dinner (my first raw oysters ever). It was my twentieth birthday, and I thought it was very special to have found a pearl on that day. So perhaps the Alain family were my Christmas hosts and it was they who gave me the little prayer book and the inscribed holy card. The prayer book is in French, of course, which I haven't spoken in 30 years.

 

The question is this: what do I do with it? It's safe to say that I won't be using it as part of my own spiritual practice. I don't want to bury it among my papers, deep in the basement, for someone else to deal with after I'm gone. I don't feel comfortable throwing it out. Is it a sacrilege to recycle a prayer book?

 

Let's see. I could call the Alliance Francaise and ask if they need a 50-year-old prayer book for their archival collection. I could call the local Catholic French-immersion high school and see if they want to add an old, virtually unused prayer book to their library collection.

 

In the meantime, as I work through the problem of how to dispose of it, it sits on top of my dresser. And we all know about dresser tops: I just cleaned that dresser top last week, sorting through six solid inches of things that needed to be filed or thrown out or otherwise Dealt With.

 

The minute I put the prayer book on that cleaned-off dresser, I knew it was a mistake. Any object, no matter how small, placed on a clean dresser-top acts as a magnet to attract more and more homeless objects. Soon a new pile covers the whole dresser top to a depth of six inches.

 

Back to the question. What do we owe the past? Does the prayer book represent the Alain family? Does it represent my year in France when I was 19 and 20? If I dispose of it will I be expunging the Alain family from my memory (though they were pretty much expunged already)? Does honoring the past mean that I am obliged to hang on to objects that I will never use again?

 

Or can I just let go of this book, no matter what part of my past it represents? Call me if you want it, and I'll dig it out from the bottom of the dresser-pile and send it to you.

 

 

Copyright 2011 Ann Tudor    www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com