Legacy Writing 365:44

I never pay attention to what’s in our medicine cabinet until I need something. So today when I opened it to get a piece of gauze, I began to wonder how many of the things in there were really used or even could be used. I found around ten medications–liquids and pills–that were expired. In fact, one nearly-full bottle of cough medicine expired in 2002. As I disposed of it all, I speculated on how many people may have taken a peek inside that cabinet over the years. Are you one of those people who can’t resist a little snooping when you’re inside someone’s bathroom?

I’ve never been that interested in the contents of anyone’s medicine cabinet. There are things I don’t particularly want to know. However, I do have my own ways of trying to assess people.

Do they have art?

Living things–animals? Plants?

And mostly, I check out their books.

If they don’t have books, I feel like I can probably never really know them at all, though I do have one friend who’s an exception to this.

These photos are of rooms in two different apartments my friend Steve R lived in. I wonder if they were ever so full again as they were when they were his, even when he wasn’t in them. When I look at these photos, I remember being in his apartment with different people, the music that played, the discussions we had, the food we ate. I don’t see empty rooms. I see life, love, friendship.

I mentally compare them to photos taken in the house of another friend who I met through Steve. Those pictures show people and parties and so many beautiful objects, yet in my memory they are the emptiest and saddest rooms.

I think of a favorite title: author Edmund White borrowed it from a letter written by Kafka about the inability of people to connect: The Beautiful Room Is Empty.

The memories that cause my heart to ache have no expiration date. They can’t be disposed of.

The rooms are always there–but all the rooms. They make the home that is my life.