The Day the Light Left Me

My mom once thought it was time to pass on a family heirloom. She used to force me to clean this dusty, old lamp that my grandmother had made. I would try to get in between the crevices with a dust cloth, but they were too slim to clean. As such, this lamp always looked like it had random lines of dust, no matter how hard I tried.

My mom would look disapprovingly, but would only mention that she would take care of it. I saw her attack the dust lines countless times with small cotton swabs. Dedication is something that came to mind every time I saw her. A word I believe could never be attributed to me. After all, as hard as I tried, I never tried harder than the dust cloth.

One day, my mom was cleaning out her figurines as I was preparing to move out and move in to my house. The time had come to leave the safety of the home I'd grown up in. My mom looked at me as if she too was deciding if it was time. She leaned down and picked up the lamp, having bubble-wrapped and cleaned it beforehand. She outstretched her arms and motioned for me to take it. She laughed and said that whenever it got too terrible to clean, I should use cotton swabs. I didn't want this. Another item on a never-ending list that would require an eternal checking effort.

I took the lamp and drove home. As I was choosing a place where it would shine, but still be relatively out of sight, I realized I had nowhere to put it. I would need to buy a small end table that would match non-existent furniture. After a quick trip to a thrift store nearby, I came back with a wood base that would uplift the lamp and match my idea of how I wanted my living room to look like.

My partner came in door, dropped their bags and stared at me. A bemused look crossed their face. "I take it your mom has passed on the heirloom." I half-smiled. They weren't wrong. It was a rite of passage. I didn't hate the lamp, but I was also aware that it wasn't only the handing of objects that was passing.

It was the understanding that time had passed. As I thought back to the figurines she was cleaning, I remember a box behind her with some of them inside. Yes, she wanted me to have the lamp, but the reality is that she was too tired of cleaning them every week. I made a mental note to check in more often. Another note, filed and to be remembered only to be filed again.

Months passed and the lamp had become an unavoidable fixture. When I sat to watch my shows, the lamp would reflect the passing scenes and make its own art. When I was reading a book, its light was perfectly bright. Sometimes I had to reposition it, like an overbearing mother trying to make sure you saw everything in your path. Once it was in the correct spot, I would fly through my book reading.

For cleaning, the lamp persisted with its dust lines. Its grooves and bends unyielding to the intensity with which I passed the dust cloth. I left and came back with some cotton swabs. As I dabbed away at the dust lines, little by little, I was reminded of watching my mother do the same. Her energy was younger, brighter and she would spin me around as she cleaned the lamp. We would dance, enjoying the mood lighting the lamp provided.

I understood now. It wasn't about dedicating myself to cleaning an object for eternity. It was the eternal representation of a person that would soon be gone. In their path, they would leave what they could to be remembered, so that the moments they shared with their loved ones would live on. I finished cleaning the lamp and sat on the couch looking at it. I thought of the times my mom would have watched my grandma cleaning the lamp. How, she not only gave me an object that held so many memories with me, but also of someone who was no longer here.

As I daydreamed, lost in my reverie, my partner bumped into the end table I bought for the lamp. It all happened quickly, too quickly for me to do anything but sit there and watch as my block of memories faded and crashed into the ground with the ear-piercing crash of ceramic. No longer would I have the light shining overbearingly, trying to light every dark corner of my house. Instead, only darkness remained and nothing would ever be the same.