Mourning Empty Caskets
How to discern when our attachments and obsessions are detracting from a life well lived.
It began with the record player. I wanted to enjoy the romance of vinyl in its beautiful, present, physicality. I wanted to recall the joy of an artefact that had the music literally etched into its lines and grooves, missing that sense of romance that comes with being able to have and hold it all in your hands. The sleeve, the liner notes, the record itself, larger than life and disconnected from every other distraction that can come with the digital consumption of music. Not only the distraction, but the seeming sense of transience that the music can often have when we don’t have it and hold it in our hands troubles me. Not so much that I abstain from it, but enough to see the beauty in a simpler, humbler, more purposeful form. I am in love with items and objects that have a single, wonderful use and purpose. Hence the wristwatch and the radio.
Nonetheless, it began with the record player, then it became about the couch with which one could enjoy the record player. Clearly, one can sit and revel in the music a little better when there’s a couch with which to avail oneself. Was I supposed to listen to my records standing up? Absurd, you’ll no doubt agree. So soon enough it was a record player, a couch, a coffee table too, all sitting upon a nice rug that I rescued from someone else’s garage. It sat beside a home gym that was has been part of our lives for as long as we’ve been married. There was a space, a retreat. Please don’t use the term ‘man cave.’ The connotations are far too base for such as civilised space. You’ll not find a record by ‘The Ethiopians’ in any such cave, so the term has no relevance here.
I’ve neglected to mention the guitar amp and drum machine (which has it’s own amp too). These were also integral elements of the retreat down in the garage, where I’d spend some scant moments, mostly in the mornings for physical and spiritual disciplines that seemed a little easier away from it all. So there was a space, a retreat. A distinctly non-cave like space. Don’t let the old street sign fool you, it was a place of great culture and dignity. Occasionally, I'd take the guitar down there whilst the kids were riding their bikes and such. It was a wonderful setup. But it came at a cost. An odd cost. And after months of resistance, we negotiated the decommissioning of the space. I won’t bore you with the political complexities of such a decision. Factors involved the reality that we already have multiple living spaces in a comfortable home that exists above the garage; we have seven children that could use the space for play and such; and I have absolutely no need for another space that replicates the existing ones upstairs. The couch, we could use it upstairs. Food for thought.
So we negotiated the decommissioning of the that space. And I fell apart in that odd, male what that makes great notions of simple things. It tore me up as if I was losing a limb, or the house itself. I resisted it like a child being asked to pull his lego city apart after hours of careful construction. I grumbled, pouted and set about shifting the negotiated remnants into a new formation that would give greater space and priority to (gasp) my children, my family and their shared use of a space that I’d deemed (almost) my own.
I was upset about nothing. Intellectually, I understood and appreciated the arguments for its deconstruction, but I’d resisted them because they interfered with my plans, my visions of what it all could be. Moreso it interfered with what it meant to me, which in light of the needs of our seven children and a wife that gives so much of herself, didn’t need to mean all that much.
I was mourning an empty casket.
We do it all the time, whenever we hold on to something that isn’t really what we make it out to be. We do it when we turn comforts and consolations into necessities and requirements. We do it when we hang on to relationships that aren’t what they used to be, and never will be. We do it when we venerate our personal artefacts, trinkets and traces of a life long lost to us, over and above the needs of our current lives.
We do it whenever we ascribe value to something that isn’t really, truly there. Now I’m not advocating that we throw away our personal histories or the cultural artefacts that we might hold dearly. My comic book collection has survived ten years of marriage and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But the books have value, to me and now, to my children. I invested a lot in them as a young, unmarried man, but they’ve held a value that goes beyond their monetary worth. They’re art, they’re literature, and they kept me alive for a long time.
But there is a difference between a cupboard full of comics and a space that simply replicates the spaces you have in the room above it. You have to invest time in truly discerning both the true value and purpose of something; as well as why it means so much to you. In the end, when we put comforts and consolations over necessities, it corrodes both our relationships and our damages our understanding of what purpose and value these things truly serve.
Sometimes its’ about salvaging a sense of self, a personal identity that you fear you’re losing. Sometimes it’s about an attachment to what a relationship used to be. It can be about preserving a misplaced sense of dignity, of pride, or your place in the world. Becoming a husband and a father challenges all of these things and causes us to evaluate and reevaluate day after day.
Sometimes it’s just about a brown couch and a record player.
But when we mourn these empty caskets, we become drawn, distracted and unavailable to love and to serve in the manner that we’re called to. When we worry more about our own designs and desires over what we could preserve and create for our families, we’ve lost our way.
So find your empty caskets. Set them on fire and work towards a way that upholds and exemplifies what matters most in life, love, faith, discipline and art. The effect will go beyond you, as it always should, as it always will - whether you like it or not.