“In working through the Winter case files, I often felt pinpricks of déjà vu: an exact turn of phrase, an absurdly specific expenditure.”
memory
Active Recall
“As of his sixth birthday next month, he will have 2,462 seconds, his entire life compressed as I wanted to remember it, into approximately 41 minutes.”
Death, Divorce, and the Magic of Kitchen Objects: How to Find Hope in Loss
“As they pass through different hands, cooking utensils can magically connect us to loved ones who are no longer with us.”
Losing My Dad in Installments
“Back then, it felt easier to say goodbye to each part of him as they left.”
Losers Keepers
“Better to imagine some subterranean Gollum crooning over my memories than to accept them being lost completely.”
Polaroid Death Machine
“I reached for the same tools that my grandmother used, the old Polaroid cameras I’d taken from what was once her home, which I cleaned and cared for, then carried out into our new, time-broken world, panicked and unsure of what I’d see.”
Solastalgia
“Pleasant memories of places past: that’s nostalgia. But what do you call the grief that comes when the modern world leaves nary a trace of the place that raised you?”
Against Rereading
“For those who do not reread, a book is like a little life. When it ends, it dies—or it lives on, imperfectly and embellished, in your memories.”
