My Father's Things

Summary

In the morning of April 5 2009 my father died; he was almost 86 years old. He lived alone, was in good health, and died suddenly. The confrontation with his silenced house was perhaps the worst moment of all. It was here, amidst his material realm, that I could see for myself that he was gone. At the same time, I realized that I had lost more than my father. My father’s home was changed into a material construction.  The human component – my dad – was the coherent force that had kept this complex integration of human-thing-relations in place as a functional whole – a "home". In a single day the home had transformed into a ruin in the making, an initial stage of an archaeological site. His absence accentuated the presence of his material world – and enhanced an awareness of how he was mirrored in his things.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ruin Memories: Materiality, aesthetics and the archaeology of the recent past   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 398