Death and What Remains: The Moth Podcast

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“Welcome to the Moth. I'm Mark Solinger. Whenever I left one passes away, they leave behind memories. The way they laughed, their famous chocolate chip cookie recipe,”

the knowledge that you were cared for by someone special. But they also leave behind things. A locket with a picture of you as a child, a coffee table they made themselves, a wedding dress that's been passed down in the family for generations. Physical objects that serve as reminders of who they were, what they valued, what they touched when they were alive. I view them as little shards of their soul, still here, even though they can't be. On this episode, two stories about the things we leave behind, and who takes care of them when we're gone.

First up is a story from Christina Mejani, who told this at a D.C. story slam. Here's Christina, lie at the moment.

I lost my fiance three weeks before we were due to be married.

“I went from planning a wedding to planning a funeral, and after having to take so many decisions about coffins and earns and the clothes to send him to the next life in,”

I just didn't have any bandwidth left to decide what to do with my unborn engagement and wedding rings. It was only on the five-month anniversary of his debt when I woke up in what was once our bed. And said, "Today's the day. Today's the day I venture to Mount Doom, which kind of looks like a shopping mall on Black Friday, except it's Germany. So there are beer-loving and schnitzel-eating oaks running about." And inside this small was the jewelry shop from where the rings had been bought.

And I had asked them to hold on to the rings until I knew what to do with them. "Ya ya!" they said, "Take all as he time you need."

They obviously didn't know what to do with me, what they called their first case of the fiancéless fiancé.

Note that they know that I take my sweet time to make a decision. I got to the store and the shop assistant seated me in the area overlooking the luxury watches. And that's where I waited for about 25 minutes. And I sat there looking at the adverts on the wall with slogans about love, how diamonds are forever, and how it's time to celebrate. Much like some people who had tried to consume me, it was misguided and at odds with how I was feeling.

The slogan that probably resonated most was "Don't crack on the pressure." Especially as I sat there thinking how in a matter of weeks those rings had gone from the bitter bling bling. I dreamed about since I was a kid to a beautiful promise my fiancé and I had made to each other. And finally something symbolizing everything that hadn't happened, the wedding anniversary that just wasn't. And that's when I became certain I did not could not want to see those rings.

Oh no, no. Up until that moment, I had thought I wanted to keep everything associated with him. Literally, I was worried I was becoming a hoarder.

“I think about the closet full of clothes that had outlived him.”

There was the unwoned blazer that he was saving for a good occasion that just never came.

And that one shirt that was so ugly, I used to call it the honey, please don't fuck me tonight, shirt. (Laughter) Or as one of the participants would say no sexy time, shirt. Yeah, I'm sure you have one of those shirts. It was hideous. I dreamed about trying it away. But you know when someone dies, a funny thing happens, you want to keep everything because they become semi-reverential.

So the shop assistant came back with a manager to see if I had made a decision.

“And that's when I broke down. I started crying.”

And my tears were flowing to the beat of the watches that ticked up all around me. I was a mess. I was such a mess. I was pretty sure I could give Golum a run for his money. I had just decided I wasn't going to keep those rings. So the time had come to pick something else. But the fact that I could do this made me feel unfaithful to my grief and shallow to my core. When really all I was trying to do was survive terrible loss and not be another thing he had left behind.

Part of the ring experience was a spiritual journey.

And it was also a critical part of my grieving process.

I learned that while dreams and sentimental objects are nice to have, it's good to know when to let them go. And while I kept the ugly shirt in the last 19 months, I've had to let go of him, our apartment, and my old life. And he's part of that old life. It's a life I wanted, no doubt. But I learned that I had to let go of that life to learn how to live in the present. I'd never went back in time to my memories where he now resides, and I gave him the biggest bear hug goodbye, apologizing that my time had come to cut this lost eye to us as a couple.

And now for the big reveal. In the end, I got something that symbolizes the part that I am on.

“And that's why I got a watch. It's a milestone of time, symbolizing the end of our time, but celebrating a new time for me.”

Time of being a Beyoncéless Beyoncé had ticked by. Thank you. [Applause] That was Christina Mejani. Christina is a lawyer from Malta living in DC with her husband. He jokes that he made sure her wedding ring came with a no return policy. A poet since childhood, she also sits on the board of an NGO that promotes the arts. My family and I moved around a lot when I was a kid, which meant that we didn't have too much stuff.

We had some trinkets we took with us, sure, but all the objects that accumulate when you live in a place for 10, 15 years. Nope, that would have made the move tricky.

“So when my father passed away when I was in my early 20s, I didn't have too many possessions of his to remember him by.”

And I really wanted to. I still moved around to fair amount when I grew up, and I felt it was important to have something of his that I carried with me. You know, besides the deep-seated guilt I get when I sleep in on a Saturday morning.

But thankfully, I had his leather gloves, his leather gloves were incredible, warm soft and very my dad.

They were useful too. I didn't just put them on a shelf. I wore them. They were a reminder that my dad was with me even when he was gone. They were really important to me. So when I donated an old coat of mine to Goodwill, I probably should have double checked that I hadn't left my dad's leather gloves in the front pocket. When I realized what I done the next day and hurried back to that goodwill, the coat was already gone with the leather gloves inside of it. Losing them shouldn't have been too bad. They were only things after all. My dad had passed away 10 years ago, but it shook me up and made me feel like I'd disappointed him somehow that he was gone on some deeper level.

Because those gloves weren't just things. They were part of my dad, a link to him.

Fortunately, I asked my mom for something else of my father's, and she sent me a baseball cap that he always wore.

I still have that baseball cap. It's on itself in my partner's apartment, and it is not leaving, and it is not going to accidentally be donated to Goodwill. Love you dad. After the break, a story about cleaning up when someone's gone. Back in a moment. Café in his best form. With Cuba, every café at Knopf trucks at the same time. With the new Cuba-Wan capsule machine from Chibu, Gennies Du Feinstenspitzen Café from Special Enbourses. Full Monday, Arômen, Dank Innovative Press Blue Technologie and Super Sitzensorten Café for every match.

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In Dekka now, many of our guests are in Diner Aldi Nordfilialle. And we'll see you again soon. Aldi, good for all. Welcome back. Our next story is from Lisa Schorier, who told this at a Denver Story Slam. Here is Lisa, live at the moment. I'm the middle of three children and older brother, younger sister. And our father's death came as a shock to us.

He was 70. He had been living on the road and his RV. And he bought this plot of land and the years on a desert surrounded by mountains and Joshua trees and cacti. And he'd been really happy there and we thought he was doing well. So when we got the news that he had passed away, we had to figure out how we were going to get out there and take care of all of his things. And we knew from our research that the inside of that RV was going to be a mess. And so we called her on to some professional cleaning companies to see if they could go out there and do the job for us.

But it was so remote that their quotes were really expensive and nobody could get out there for weeks. So the three of us got on the phone and we decided we're going to do it. So we traveled to Arizona from our corners of the US and we loaded up on cleaning supplies and PPE. And we drove out into the desert. As you imagine, there's this little white RV. It's the trailer kind. You pull behind a truck parked in this beautiful alien landscape with these weird Joshua trees and his hot, its august in the desert.

And my brother is the oldest and he decides he's going to go on first.

And he opens the door and he steps in and he immediately just starts grabbing stuff and throwing it out the door. And it's flying at me pillows and blankets and shoes and I jump back and he yells out. There's a lot of fluid. And by that he meant body fluid. And so I stare at my sister and she's got goggles in a mask and gloves. She's standing there with an open trash bag and we just stare at each other and horror.

And there's stuff flying out the door. And then my sister says, that's it Lisa, we're doing this and she goes into the RV. And now the RV is shaking and she's shoving stuff and bags and stuff is flying out the door. And I just stand there and I realize not only is this going to be a very emotionally hard process, but it's going to be a chaotic one.

And as so many things with my family, I realize I cannot control this situation.

I just have to participate in it. So I go into the RV.

“And we spent the next few days cleaning that RV out, getting the soiled stuff out, identifying the important stuff like paperwork.”

My dad had a lot of cash and guns in there and we had to deal with all of that. And as we worked, I noticed that there was this fine red spray across the walls and ceiling of the RV. And when your body decomposes, the liquids that are inside out gas. And it flows to the air like vapor and then it hits a solid surface and it goes back into a liquid state and then the liquid dries. So we've been in this RV cleaning up all of our dad's effects and telling stories remembering his life.

And all that time we've been surrounded by his essence just painted on the walls of this RV. So on the final day, we set the scrubbing. And I've got all this PPE on, it's so hot and I'm sweating inside all of this stuff. And I got a sponge and this bucket, we had this industrial cleaning solution, we got from a funeral director. And I'm scrubbing the wall and I'd had a very hard relationship with my dad.

All three of us had tough relationships with him. And you know, you'd live this weird life. The last few years of his life traveling and being a full timer or a van life or a rubber tramp. They call themselves. But he'd somehow found some peace out there and he'd figured some things out about life.

And so I was glad about that for him. But none of it made sense. Why were we doing this?

“Normal people don't clean up their fathers, guts off the walls, right?”

Like this was weird and it was kind of mad about the whole thing. And I'm sweating and I'm scrubbing the wall and I had this memory from when we were kids. My dad used to say, if it's white, don't touch it. And what he meant was if there was a painted surface like a wall or a door. He didn't want us to touch it with our dirty hands and get smudges all over it.

He has a real dad thing to say. Because smudges on things just drove him crazy. And so I'm there, I'm scrubbing him off the wall and I say, God, damn it, dad. I told you if it's white, don't touch it. And my brother a few feet away from me just starts laughing.

My sister starts laughing and I start laughing.

“And it's this huge emotional release we've just been through days of this horrible cleanup project at the end of our father's hard life.”

And we still had to reconcile with all this meant for us and to walk away from this experience and process it. And that laughter just floated through the air like vapor.

And it exited the vents and the doors and the windows.

And our laughter went into the desert and became part of it. Thank you. [ Applause ] That was Lisa Shroyer.

“Lisa is a popular knitting content creator and writer based in Colorado.”

He's currently at work on a memoir about her conspiracy theorist father and how she and her siblings cleared up the mess he left when he died in 2022. We reached out to Lisa to see if she had anything else she wanted to share about the events of the story. She said, "It took us four days to clean out that RV, but it will be a lifetime figuring out what the hell happened. My dad was an extreme-dune-stay-prepper and conspiracy theorist, but he was a pretty normal middle-class corporate guy until he was in his 50s.

“Then he got into internet conspiracies, my mom left him and, "Yeah, the American dream went sideways. He died alone in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by guns.”

Weird thing? He was finally happy there."

That brings us to the end of our episode. Thanks so much for listening. We hope that you're able to keep your loved ones in your thoughts. No matter where they are. Mark Solinger is the podcast producer of the Moth, the co-creator of the audio drama Archive 81, a lover of museums, and someone who feels very strange, reading his own bio. This episode of the Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Genes, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Mark Solinger. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Cluchai, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinalae, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Susanne Rust, and Patricia Orenya.

The Moth podcast is presented by Odyssey, special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Restennis. All Moth stories are true as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org.