Transitional Object

My mother’s dead. She died several days ago. I’m inside her three-bedroom house, which still smells like the perfume she wore. I’m in my childhood bedroom, sitting on my old twin-size mattress, eyeballing the vivid texture of her gray carpet. I’m here because I’m tasked with choosing which of her possessions are worth keeping and which to throw away. Her perfume is woody, mossy, floral, powdery; it lingers in the foyer and in every room. I smell her. I see her footprints on the carpet like animal tracks on the snow. This house and the things in it are a museum now. My mother is only ashes and memories.

In the closet, I find Raccoon. The brown of its plastic eyes are scratched, but its black pupils shine in my direction. It’s on the corner of the shelf above the hangers. There’s no thinking; I grab Raccoon and hug it to my chest. I welcome the pain of its plastic nose on my sternum as I stroke the threadbare fur of its back. This stuffed animal knows me. For years, I slept with it nestled under my chin. I found comfort in keeping it close, in the feeling that we were one. 

Racoon watches from the bed as I continue the evaluation process of everything. The more items I handle, the more I sense that all objects are junk until you put value into them. Old clothing is junk. Old wallets and baseball trophies are junk. A puka shell necklace, a sony MP3 player from 2002, the VHS tape cassettes; they’re all junk because I say so. I go on a rampage where everything I touch gets put into garbage bags. I fill them like my mother’s remains fill her $400 urn. I only stop when I get to the yearbooks. 

I’m either in the “pain and guilt” or “depression” stage of grief. It turns out handling an object isn’t required to feel the value you’ve placed into it. Without opening a yearbook, I’m overwhelmed by the happenings of my past. These books on the bottom shelf contain years of memories like a dead mother’s house. It’s human nature to remember bad things before the good ones. It’s what keeps us alive. For example, we don’t play with fire because we recognize it turns things to ash. My bad memories from the yearbook times were good times to me while I was living them. Now that I’m older, I see what was lost. 

Jack Blithe was my best friend growing up. In 1999, he was the first person I knew who had bleached hair like Eminem. The first time we hung out, I went to his house, and his mom bleached my hair like Slim Shady too. We didn’t even ask my mother if it was alright. It just happened with smiles in one of their brilliant bathrooms. His house back then cost double what my mother’s house costs now. His mom chauffeured us in a Lincoln Navigator that was so fancy the back seats reclined. But it wasn’t just the material things that made me want to befriend Jack; it was Jack. He was the only kid I knew who controlled the radio station in front of his parents; the only one who could bar-spin the ten-foot gap off Iron Horse trail; the only one who could do backflips at school dances. I thought that being like him was the dream. 

In high school, Jack and I hung out even more. I was with him wherever he went and enjoyed the benefits of his friendship. It was because he always took me to places where girls were that I got good at talking to girls, and why I’m not awkward with them now. He helped me do everything I saw the cool kids before us do. We’d take shots of vodka in a Ford Explorer instead of going to math class and smoke weed from glass pipes during assemblies. We had fun at school, but the trips we took that showed off his wealth are what I remember most. We went shopping in the Houston Galleria, took a helicopter ride in the Grand Canyon, and stayed in oceanfront property in Malibu. I’m stunned by how much his parents must have spent on me. I was fifteen years old then, living the good life while my mother sat alone in her woody, mossy-smelling house watching Crime Scene Investigation. 

Nas has this song we used to listen to. He raps, “A thug changes, and love changes, and best friends become strangers.” Back then, what made those lyrics valuable was that I could rap them. I didn’t consider that the changes Nas spoke about were the backdrop of life itself. In college, Jack and I lived together in a townhouse off Scottsdale Rd. It was a new construction that his parents bought, and the room I had was fully furnished. Our relationship changed when he became my landlord. He treated me like I owed him something, and I resented him for making me feel like his sidekick. We started to hate each other, then he found a girl. She didn’t pay rent, but she practically moved in. I moved out. Jack and I talked to each other less and less, and when we finally graduated, I wasn’t even invited to the party his parents threw at the Phoenician hotel. 

This is the power of the value you put into things; I haven’t thought about Jack in years, but the spines of my yearbooks are enough to drag me to my past. I sit down on the bed and look at Raccoon. The faded black stitching of his smile is fraying. It’s depressing that my mother kept this junk and that it’s my job to go through it and all the memories it conjures. But I can't manage to put Raccoon in the garbage bag yet. That stuffed animal was by my side whenever my capacity to be alone was weakened by anxiety or fear. Did my mother save it as a souvenir, or because she thought I’d need it again? 

I don’t remember when I stopped sleeping with Raccoon tucked against me or when I began to leave it at home. I must have been mature enough to know it was silly to depend on a stuffed animal to get me through life. I haven’t thought about Racoon for years, but I understand now it’s because of it that I was able to grow. I feel guilty because Raccoon helped me through so much, and then one day, I just ignored it.

I don’t have social media or many friends in real life either. I’m in my late thirties and live alone. My mother lived alone. Maybe we do end up like our parents. I don’t know what Jack’s life is like. I imagine he’s still rich, and his mother’s still alive. I think how strange it is that Jack and I aren’t a part of each other's lives anymore. Then, one by one, I take the yearbooks from the bottom shelf and throw them into the garbage bag. Raccoon watches with dead eyes, and I realize something: we're all strangers now.

I brought Raccoon everywhere I went like Jack brought me everywhere he went. I was his security blanket. I kept him company when he slept and was his comfort when he was away from home. I can’t blame him for the relationship because I allowed it to happen; I thought he was the dream, and I lost my youth to being his Raccoon. 

The yearbooks have filled the garbage bag to its brim, so I pull it shut. But I’m not finished with my room until I determine what to do with all of the objects, and Raccoon is still on my bed. That’s when it hits me, and I think, “What the hell am I doing? My mother’s dead, and I’m tripping out over a stuffed animal? Blaming Jack for my past? Jesus Christ, I still have the rest of the house to do.”

I get the garbage bag back open and take Raccoon off my bed. I pause for one last second and think, “What if you throw it away, but you need something like it to help you get through this? What are you going to do? Buy a weighted blanket? Call a friend you don't have?” 

Then I remember Nas saying change happens. People move on. There’s no value in the stuffed animal I’m holding other than what I put into it. I shove it into the garbage bag with the rest of the junk. My mother’s perfume still lingers.