Eve Sedgwick’s devoted brother, my old boyfriend and friend, died seven years ago at the age of 57.
The turn of the year decided me to go to the basement where, over a decade ago, he asked us to store boxes of his books, tapes, clothing, and papers. Time to deal with the books.
I’d already gone through the papers, and sent Eve’s letters and photographs on to her widower, Hal, in New York City; I’d already given David’s clothes to Goodwill. The tightly taped and roped boxes of books, however, daunted me – their physical and emotional weight sat in a dark corner, fit to burst.
Yesterday, out under a winter sky, the sun piercingly clear, I watched a red fox slip across our yard and take the small hill up to our neighbor’s, and this somehow sealed the deal: I’d go down with a sharp pair of scissors and cut the ropes and shelve the books.
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Not everything was a book. There
was a colorful, wonderful, untouched
Indonesian journal, in which I’ll
write lecture notes for this
semester’s classes.
There were 36 Heroes of the
Blues cards.
David’s mother inscribed a copy
of Orwell’s writings to him.
A Straussian in his teens, David
held on to this 1967 pamphlet.
At the end of the copy of A Dialogue
on Love that his sister gave him, she writes:
It never seems sensible to pass along moral injunctions.
I sometimes think that beyond the Golden Rule,the only one that matters is this:
If you can
be happy, you should.
