…the stuff the everydayness is extraordinary when memories and artifacts are all you have.
Scott C. Campbell
https://www.easttexasphotographer.com/phone/•evelyn-s.html
The “things” in our lives, the little objects that are put down and sometimes forgotten, or have just become a part of the landscapes of our dwelling places over the years — how much do these artifacts of daily living tell about us, in subtle, private and mysterious ways.
Years ago I came across a remarkable portfolio of photographs by Scott C. Campbell, an east Texas photographer. He was encouraged by family and friends to share them through his Website. They are photos of his parents’ home after his mother died.
I think about them from time to time because of what they say about memory, and about how we can be known and remembered by what we leave behind. I am quite drawn to these poignant images. They strike a chord somewhere deep within me because I have many photographs of my mother and her house, interior and exterior, taken over the course of the ten years I lived there as her caregiver from 2010-2020 as she slowly declined with dementia.
I am not sure I could share the type of personal family pictures Scott Campbell has, with such loving reverence, shared online. We get a deeply emotional glimpse into his mother’s life through the everyday artifacts that are universally familiar to all of us. Everyday personal belongings are often the most profoundly moving vestiges of a loved one’s life.
These physical reminders of a person or a place make me think about mortality. They remind me that the minutia of everyday life would be lost to memory forever were it not for those physical reminders we hold onto, be they photos in an album or a hairbrush left on a dresser in an empty house. Fortunately, no one disturbed the house after Campbell’s mother passed away.
Like books on a bookshelf, the objects within a dwelling tell parts of the stories of our lives as perhaps nothing else can. Campbell wrote a poignant introduction to a published selection of his photos titled “Evelyn’s,” which appeared in LensWork magazine:
There was always a powerful, magical presence that radiated from within his mother’s soul. A dedicated in-home piano teacher, nearly everything to her could be related to a song.
Campbell wrote:
Some of my most poignant memories are of her singing to me songs by Patsy Cline. Then on Dec. 6, 1999, holding her hand as I did many times before, I said my final farewell to her. Evelyn Campbell, my mother. This just could not be real, I thought.
For the next year and a half, the care of my disabled father became my brother’s and my responsibility, as Dad could not manage by himself. My wife and I took Dad in at our home in Longview, Texas. As often as I could, my father and I would make the 90-mile journney through northeast Texas to the small house that he and mother had shared for 22 years. It was still as it was. In an upside-down time in his life, Dad’s wish was to leave the house intact. He found solace in the familiar surroundings.
During those visits, time and time again, the house echoed her presence. Flower bulbs stored in the garage over winter were ready to plant. An unfinished “to do” list was left in a kitchen drawer. Her hairbrush on the dresser smelled of aerosol hair spray. Cooking utensils hung at attentiion, ready to be used. Despite neglect, the Christmas cactus on the front porch continued to grow and bloom. Reflective surfaces retained fingerprint and smudges.
When Campbell’s father died, he continued the visits alone until it became time to empty the house and let new inhabitants “bring new memories to its rooms”…
After my mother passed away six years ago, my sister and I went through her personal belongings: her beautiful Chinese export porcelains, her jewelry and silver collection, clothes, her prayer journals, photos and papers. We saved many precious artifacts. Sadly, we had to dispose of a lot, and most of her furniture and antiques were sold at an estate sale. But I have held onto some smaller pieces of furniture as well as small items that she loved. I have stored them here in my apartment and also in my storage unit.
I wish I had taken more pictures of the inside of the house where we lived and where I took care of her those many years. I left everything untouched exactly as they were when she died at the end of January 2020. Then Covid hit and we postponed selling the house. I could not afford to live there. Clearing out the house to put it up for sale was one of the saddest experiences of my life. It was doubly emotional because I had been her caregiver for so long.
Although, I didn’t document her possessions in their original setting as Campbell did in his mother’s house after she died, I have enough photos and physical reminders to take me back with vivid memories to those years when her beautiful smile graced every day she was alive, even in spite of the cruel ravages of dementia. Her spirit was and still is imbued in every facet of that house, even if it is only family history now.
The den in the family house downtown where Mom spent so much time in her last years.
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