Friday 22 January 2016

The Price of Gold

 (Photo credit to www.relatably.com)

It's amazing how valuable something is or becomes when it is a finite resource.

I was going through my inbox the other day noting that I had just over 2000 emails which had accumulated over at least 3 years with a few stragglers from earlier than that, when I came across emails from old friends that I no longer communicated with for whatever reason as well as emails from both of my parents.

There was a time back in 2012, a few months after I moved out of home that I was processing a lot and essentially cut off contact with everyone in my family except my brother.

For a period of about 3-6 months I had the barest of contact with my parents, still reeling from a lifetime of hurt and other emotions, having been so sheltered and finally being able to adjust to life on my own, it was a lot to come to terms with.

During this time I deleted whatever I could of theirs that came through if I REALLY didn't want to see it, otherwise I just viewed and ignored it so I wouldn't have to focus on it. I decided when I moved out that as much as I was hurting, I didn't want to be the kind of person that slams the door shut out of pain and anger, then regrets it terribly a few years down the track when they realise how much they've missed and how, with enough time and space, things could really have been forgiven and built up from.

Skip ahead 4 years and now going through my inbox, I'm treating those same emails like some kind of treasure Nicholas Cage would star in a movie about saving.

I can now completely understand how, after a popular person dies, whatever they've made becomes the most precious treasure because it is now a finite thing.

(Photo credit to www.startofhappiness.com)

The few emails I had from my mother which I normally would have rolled my eyes at, I'm now mentally and emotionally clinging to like a kid with a security blanket. Her main method of contact was via phone call which unfortunately now looking back I didn't record. Luckily her ineptitude when it came to technology meant that quite a few photos she took with her camera are actually videos with her asking dad or someone else if the photo had been taken.

It's been 8 months since she passed on and it still doesn't feel real, I'm not sure if it ever will. It's like you start new routines and they help you get through the hard times which you just keep on going with, but then you look back and realise just how much has changed even though it feels like yesterday in a way. Now whenever I say 'about 6 months ago' I do a double-take a realise that the benchmark for things occurring is around the time that she passed so I can definitely tell whether it was a certain vague time frame or not. It's a strange thing that.

The period of time around her demise and the emails that came in were harder than others to reread, as you can imagine.

All of the artworks mum made are still scattered around dad's place, the home I lived in from age 10-21. It's not that I don't want to touch them, it's more the struggle to fully comprehend that what we've got is all we'll ever have. She'll never make artworks or anything else ever again and that sucks immeasurably.

Have you noticed how much more special and meaningful something is after the creator of it has passed on? Those photos, that whachamacallit, the thingamebob, the doodad become the most valuable things you now own. Sure it's not about the money, but they're as good as gold and there's no conceivable price you can really put on them because the person that made them or that you associate with them is no more.

What do you consider the price of gold? Is there even a numerical amount?! What is gold to you anyway? Maybe it's the literal sense of money or jewelry, or maybe it's the sentimental sense of the perfume someone wore or the brown jacket with the fur trim, the red handbag still sitting on the chair in the kitchen where it was dropped one day and never picked up again.

One thing's for sure: the price of gold goes up exponentially the moment it becomes a finite resource and there really is no true substitute for it.

(Photo credit to www.notable-quotes.com)