Lost Pillow Covers

Lost Pillow Covers

I'm overcome with sadness for all the pillow covers that I've ever lost. The ones with pink and white stripes that my dog once fell asleep on, the ones with little spring flowers, mainly yellow on a white base, the neutral ones with beige and white bought at a Target over a decade ago.

It’s not just the pillow covers, I realize, as I’m going through photos of my dead dog. Old T-shirts with faded-out letters of places visited, jackets that represented my current identity perfectly at the time, a lampshade inspired by a recurring autumn addiction to Gilmore Girls, a soft grey pajama that could stay on me past mid day on lazy sundays. All quietly disappeared out of my life.

Some items currently reside with lost relationships, some items were sadly left behind on benches at airports, and some abruptly stolen from me with a car break in, during a dinner pit stop on the way to Sacramento several years ago, along with other items in my backpack.

Some items lost its usefulness, and after sufficient mourning, were thrown out due to need for space, like Maxes’ red food and water bowl. And recently many items got sold due to limited space as the boxes would travel over the Atlantic Ocean. 

I'm continuing going through pictures of my dead dog. The realization of the preciousness that our lives simply had overlap overcomes me. So simple, yet so improbable. A tail moving from left to right upon seeing its owner, an arm that itches, a brain that immediately fills with limiting and negative thoughts as soon as they sit down with a book in the sun. The gentle snoring of the dog, breath in, breath out. The sound of a fly buzzing past your ear. Nothing better at demanding the noticing of the present time, but a fly buzzing in your ear.  

I now look at our hamper in the bedroom, as I’m lying on the bed. It's full of things that will slowly disappear out of our lives. That soft pink T-shirt that is already hanging by a thread. The colorful striped pajamas I remember I wore in Vegas when we decided to leave the bars early and eat fruit in bed while watching our favorite show in the AC instead. His Calvin Klein underwear that, when we bought it in San Francisco, felt like part of designing a new lifestyle, one that included him wearing Calvin Klein underwear, for starters. 

This same underwear would never have known it would move to Luxembourg. To this place, where everything feels foreign and new. And one day I will look back at pictures of our lives right now: these towels, this striped hamper, these slippers that I just bought new only a few days ago, in the mall near Alejo’s work, together when my partner came with me to meet him at the shopping mall after work, to get me out of a low mood. These sandals will in a blink of a moment turn worn and damaged, and will need to be replaced. And a slightly older version of myself will buy them, who knows where. Someone who looks a little bit less like they were once a child. 

I felt a sadness when during a service I saw the pictures of the lives lived by these no longer present people. Photos from the 90s where the children, who are now 40-year-olds, were still blonde little kids. Parents at neighborhood parties, the woman's cheeks extra rosy from the wine, the bad lighting somehow cementing the moment even better, the laughter. I could smell the spilled beer and feel the sticky bar. Moments fully lived in the present. In a way I wondered if I do it as presently. But regardless. that somehow completely disappeared. The people in them, the things in them, the bar they might have been sitting in.