Death and What Remains: The Moth Podcast

Whenever a loved one passes away, they leave behind memories: the way they laughed, their famous chocolate chip cookie recipe, the knowledge that you were cared for by someone special. But they also leave behind objects, and those objects can be deeply meaningful. Today, two stories about the things we leave behind - and who takes care of them when we’re gone. This episode was hosted by Marc Sollinger. Storytellers: Kristina Miggiani must decide what to do with her wedding ring after her fiance passes away. After her father passes away, Lisa Shroyer and her siblings have to clean out the RV he was living in. Podcast # 987

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Speaker 01

  Welcome to The Moth. I'm Mark Solinger. Whenever a loved one passes away, they leave behind memories. The way they laughed, their famous chocolate chip cookie recipe, the knowledge that you were cared for by someone special. But they also leave behind things. A locket with a picture of you as a child, a coffee table they made themselves, a wedding dress that's been passed down in the family for generations. Physical objects that serve as reminders of who they were, what they valued, what they touched when they were alive. I view them as little shards of their soul, still here even though they can't be. On this episode, two stories about the things we leave behind and who takes care of them when we're gone.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  First up is a story from Christina Mijani, who told this at a DC Story Slam. Here's Christina, live at The Moth.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  I lost my fiance three weeks before we were due to be married. I went from planning a wedding to planning a funeral. And after having to take so many decisions about coffins and urns and the clothes to send him to the next life in, I just didn't have any bandwidth left to decide what to do with my unworn engagement and wedding rings. It was only on the five-month anniversary of his death when I woke up in what was once our bed and said, "Today's the day. Today's the day I venture to Mount Doom," which kind of looks like a shopping mall

• 2:04Speaker 02

  on Black Friday, except it's Germany, so there are beer-loving and schnitzel-eating orcs running about.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  And inside this mall was the jewelry shop from where the rings had been bought. And I had asked them to hold on to the rings, you know, until I knew what to do with them. "Ya ya," they said, "take all the time you need." They obviously didn't know what to do with me, what they called their first case of the fianceless fiance. Not that they know that I take my sweet time to make a decision.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  I got to the store and the shop assistant seated me in the area overlooking the luxury watches. And that's where I waited for about twenty-five minutes. And I sat there, looking at the adverts on the wall with slogans about love, how diamonds are forever, and how it's time to celebrate. Much like some people who had tried to console me, it was misguided and at odds with how I was feeling. The slogan that probably resonated most was "Don't crack under pressure." Especially as I sat there thinking how, in a matter of weeks,

• 3:26Speaker 02

  those rings had gone from the bit of bling bling I dreamed about since I was a kid to a beautiful promise my fiance and I had made to each other. And finally, something symbolizing everything that hadn't happened, the wedding anniversary that just wasn't. And that's when I became certain I did not, could not want to see those rings. Oh, no, no.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Up until that moment, I had thought I wanted to keep everything associated with him. Literally, I was worried I was becoming a hoarder. I think about the closet full of clothes that had outlived him. There was the unworn blazer that he was saving for a good occasion that just never came. And that one shirt that was so ugly. I used to call it the "Honey, please don't fuck me tonight shirt."

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Or as one of the participants would say, "No sexy time shirt." Yeah, I'm sure you have one of those shirts. It was hideous. I dreamed about throwing it away.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  But you know, when someone dies, a funny thing happens. You want to keep everything because they become semi-reverential. It's like memories live in them.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  So the shop assistant came back with the manager to see if I had made a decision. And that's when I broke down. I started crying. And my tears were flowing to the beat of the watches that ticked tock all around me. I was a mess. I was such a mess. I was pretty sure I could give Gollum a run for his money.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  I had just decided I wasn't going to keep those rings. So the time had come to pick something else. But the fact that I could do this made me feel unfateful to my grief and shallow to my core. When really, all I was trying to do was survive terrible loss and not be another thing he had left behind.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Part of the ring experience was a spiritual journey. And it was also a critical part of my grieving process. I learned that while dreams and sentimental objects are nice to have, it's good to know when to let them go. And while I kept the ugly shirts, in the last 19 months, I've had to let go of him, our apartment, and my old life. And he's part of that old life. It's a life I wanted, no doubt. But I learned that I had to let go of that life to learn how to live in the present. I therefore went back in time to my memories, where he now resides.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  And I gave him the biggest bear hug goodbye, apologizing that my time had come to cut this lost tie to us as a couple. And now, for the big reveal. In the end, I got something that symbolizes the path that I am on. And that's why I got a watch. It's a milestone of time, symbolizing the end of our time, but celebrating a new time for me. The time of being a fiance-less fiance had ticked by. Thank you.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  That was Christina Mijani. Christina is a lawyer from Malta, living in DC with her husband. He jokes that he made sure her wedding ring came with a no-returns policy. A poet since childhood, she also sits on the board of an NGO that promotes the arts. My family and I moved around a lot when I was a kid, which meant that we didn't have too much stuff. We had some trinkets we took with us, sure, but all the objects that accumulate when you live in a place for 10, 15 years? Nope. That would have made the move tricky. So, when my father passed away, when I was in my early twenties, I didn't have too many possessions of his to remember him by. And I really wanted to.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  I still moved around a fair amount when I grew up, and I felt it was important to have something of his that I carried with me, you know? Besides the deep-seated guilt I get when I sleep in on a Saturday morning. But thankfully, I had his leather gloves. His leather gloves were incredible. Warm, soft, and very my dad. They were useful, too. I didn't just put them on a shelf, I wore them. They were a reminder that my dad was with me, even when he was gone. They were really important to me. So when I donated an old coat of mine to Goodwill, I probably should have double-checked that I hadn't left my dad's leather gloves in the front pocket.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  When I realized what I'd done the next day and hurried back to that Goodwill, the coat was already gone with the leather gloves inside of it. Losing them shouldn't have been too bad. They were only things, after all. My dad had passed away 10 years ago. But it shook me up. It made me feel like I'd disappointed him somehow, that he was gone on some deeper level. Because those gloves weren't just things. They were part of my dad, a link to him. Fortunately, I asked my mom for something else of my father's, and she sent me a baseball cap that he always wore. I still have that baseball cap. It's on a shelf in my partner and I's apartment, and it is not leaving,

• 9:14Speaker 01

  and it is not going to accidentally be donated to Goodwill. Love you, Dad. After the break, a story about cleaning up when someone's gone. Back in a moment.

• 9:27Speaker 03

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• 11:22Speaker 01

  Welcome back. Our next story is from Lisa Schreier, who told this at a Denver Story Slam. Here's Lisa, live at the mic.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  I'm the middle of three children, older brother, younger sister. And our father's death came as a shock to us. He was 70, he'd been living on the road in his RV, and he bought this plot of land in the Arizona desert, surrounded by mountains, and Joshua trees, and cacti. And he'd been really happy there, and we thought he was doing well. So when we got the news that he had passed away, we had to figure out how we were going to get out there and take care of all of his things. And we knew from our research that the inside of that RV was going to be a mess. And so we called around to some professional cleaning companies to see if they could go out there and do the job for us. But it was so remote that their quotes were really expensive, and nobody could get out there for weeks.

• 12:20Speaker 05

  So the three of us got on the phone, and we decided, we're going to do it.

• 12:24Speaker 05

  So we traveled to Arizona from our corners of the US and we loaded up on cleaning supplies and PPE and we drove out into the desert. So you imagine, there's this little white RV, it's the trailer kind you pull behind a truck, parked in this beautiful alien landscape with these weird Joshua trees and it's hot, it's August, in the desert. And my brother is the oldest and he decides he's gonna go in first. And he opens the door and he steps in and he immediately just starts grabbing stuff and throwing it out the door. And it's flying at me, pillows and blankets and shoes and I jump back and he yells out, "There's a lot of fluid." And by that, he meant body fluid. And so I stare at my sister and she's got goggles and a mask and gloves, she's standing

• 13:07Speaker 05

  there with an open trash bag and we just stare at each other in horror and there's stuff flying out the door. And then my sister says, "That's it Lisa, we're doing this." And she goes into the RV. And now the RV is shaking and she's shoving stuff in bags and stuff is flying out the door and I just stand there and I realize, not only is this going to be a very emotionally hard process, but it's gonna be a chaotic one. And as, so many things with my family, I realize, I cannot control the situation, I just have to participate in it. So I go into the RV. And we spent the next few days cleaning that RV out, getting the soiled stuff out, identifying the important stuff like paperwork. My dad had a lot of cash and guns in there and we had to deal with all of that.

• 13:48Speaker 05

  And as we worked, I noticed that there was this fine red spray across the walls and ceiling of the RV. And when your body decomposes, the liquids that are inside outgas. And it flows through the air like vapor and then it hits a solid surface and it goes back into a liquid state and then the liquid dries. So we've been in this RV, cleaning up all of our dad's effects and telling stories, remembering his life. And all that time, we'd been surrounded by his essence just painted on the walls of this RV.

• 14:22Speaker 05

  So on the final day, we set to scrubbing. And I'm up, I've got all this PPE on, it's so hot, and I'm sweating inside all of this stuff. And I got a sponge and this bucket, we had this industrial cleaning solution we got from a funeral director. And I'm scrubbing the wall. And I'd had a very hard relationship with my dad. All three of us had had tough relationships with him. And you know, he'd lived this weird life, the last few years of his life, traveling and being a full-timer, or a van lifer, or a rubber tramp, they called themselves. But he'd somehow found some peace out there, and he'd figured some things out about life. And so I was glad about that for him. But none of it made sense, why were we doing this? Normal people don't clean up their father's guts off the walls, right?

• 15:06Speaker 05

  Like, this is weird. And I was kind of mad about the whole thing, and I'm sweating, and I'm scrubbing the wall. And I had this memory from when we were kids. My dad used to say, "If it's white, don't touch it." And what he meant was, if there was a painted surface, like a wall or a door, he didn't want us to touch it with our dirty hands and get smudges all over it. That's a real dad thing to say. Because smudges on things just drove him crazy. And so I'm there, I'm scrubbing him off the wall, and I say, "God damn it, Dad, I told you, if it's white, don't touch it." And my brother, a few feet away from me, just starts laughing. And it turns into this deep, shaking laugh. My sister starts laughing, and I start laughing.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  And it's this huge emotional release, we've just been through days of this horrible cleanup project, at the end of our father's hard life, and we still had to reconcile what all of this meant for us, and to walk away from this experience and process it. And that laughter just floated through the air like vapor. And it exited the vents, and the doors, and the windows. And our laughter went into the desert and became part of it. Thank you.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  That was Lisa Schreier. Lisa is a popular knitting content creator and writer based in Colorado. She's currently at work on a memoir about her conspiracy theorist father and how she and her siblings cleared up the mess he left when he died in 2022. We reached out to Lisa to see if she had anything else she wanted to share about the events of the story. She said, quote, "It took us four days to clean out that arfie, but it'll be a lifetime figuring out what the hell happened. My dad was an extreme doomsday prepper and conspiracy theorist, but he was a pretty normal, middle-class corporate guy until he was in his 50s. Then he got into internet conspiracies, my mom left him, and yeah, the American dream went sideways. He died alone in the middle of

• 17:14Speaker 01

  nowhere, surrounded by guns. Weird thing, he was finally happy there." That brings us to the end of our episode. Thanks so much for listening. We hope that you're able to keep your loved ones in your thoughts, no matter where they are. Mark Sollinger is the podcast producer of The Moth, the co-creator of the audio drama Archive 81, a lover of museums, and someone who feels very strange reading his own bio. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Kluchay, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinalle, Caledonia Cairns, Kate

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Uranya. The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. All Moth stories are true as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.