Memories into the Trash: A Tale of Grief, Snow, and Moving On

A prose piece by Sophia Wang

Photo from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-rose-on-concrete-floor-6495751/

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Snowflakes, sometimes thin and frail, other times large and ruthless, are drifting down from the gray sky. Covering the blackish tiles of each roof of the rows of houses beyond my window; covering the trees, the roads, the sidewalks, all signs of life and colour. Hailing the new year with a blank slate. 

I press my hand to the icy glass, imagining the ice creeping up my skin, seeping into my blood, my heart.

“...illa! Scilla!”

I drop my arm and turn around, ignoring the mess and stuffiness in my room. “What?”

With a thin finger, dad points to a stack of drawers and baskets and boxes swaying precariously on my bed. “Tomorrow’s the new year, so this needs to go. ASAP. I won’t tell you what to throw away, but any old junk that can be thrown should be. Got it?”  

I nod. 

“We’ll leave you to it,” he says with a smile. 

Then he turns away and puts an arm around my stepmother, who’s trying to sort through the stack of stuff on my bed. I watch as dad’s awkwardly thin figure escorts my stepmom’s bulkier one out of my room. Then I close the door behind them. And lock it. And finally breathe out.

Eventually, I step back to my small sofa and plop into it. Press my palms into my eyes. 

‘Any old junk that can be thrown should be,’ dad said. I know what he means. 

The old, faded photos. The cards. The clothes that are evidently too small for me or that are literally ripping apart but that I refuse to throw anyway. The stuffed animals. The dried markers and snapped pencils and other random arts and crafts things. 

And that box. 

Dad's voice is just one of many I hear:

‘Let go.’

‘It’s already been five years.’

‘It’s time to live your own life.’

‘Sometimes, it’s best to forget.’

‘Don’t overthink it.’

I know they only ever mean one thing: move on.

So I try. 

I peel my hands away from my eyes and push myself upright. I take a deep breath, steeling myself. Feeling ice seep over my heart. Perhaps imagining, wistfully, that I have no heart.

My hands move: 

Defty picking up broken pencils, stained with colours—colours I imagine shrouded by ice and snow.

Sweeping up marker caps. Dumping it all into a large white trash bin that nearly rises to my chest. Colour devoured by blankness. Ice. Snow.

Grabbing one piece of crumpled paper after another. I try not to notice how each of these pages has unique colours, unique patterns. Snow, I think. Ice. Blanketing it all. And I stuff all of them into the trash can. 

Snatching up one stuffed animal after another. Each looks different. Feels different. Some are soft, with lush fur. Some are broken, with white stuffing leaking from their stitches. Into the trash, too. Snow. Ice. I need to push a bit for everything to fit, but everything does fit. 

Piling old, broken, or small clothes into my arms. So many sizes. So many colours. So many stories. Forced, all of them, into the snow-white trash can. I’m out of breath when I finally fit everything in, and the can looks a bit swollen, but everything fits. It’s fine. Everything fits. 

But my hands stop moving. Lower back to my side. Tremble a bit as they do. 

My eyes flutter shut. 

The world is cruel, I tell myself, so I must be just as cruel to live on. 

I take a breath. Open my eyes. Pick up all the cards, each one with its own loving messages that I must have read a thousand times. And shove them into the bursting bin, all at once. 

For a moment, the ground sways, the world spins, and I grip the edge of the bin to steady myself. Clammy fingers slipping on plastic.

Ice. Snow. 

I glance at the photos scattered all over my bed. And I glance away. 

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I try to move on.

A lot of the time, I convince others I have. 

Sometimes, I convince myself I have. But those moments are rare, fleeting, and full of lies.

And I hate lies.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

An eternity passes before I move again. Gathering those photos I don’t dare look at with those trembling fingers feels as hard as trying to swim up a waterfall. But at the end of eternity, they too are stuffed into the can. Forever buried in snow, in ice. 

Finally, I look at the box. It’s made of wood, shaped like a butterfly, and painted with myriad colours. I remember how we painted and repainted it. How we once spilled an entire can of paint over it. How we once painted flowers, then the sea, then the sunrise, then a night sky. There are traces of the paintings, albeit scratched.

I take it into my arms and hug it tightly. Squeeze my eyes shut. Feel the ice crack, and the snow melt. 

I sometimes think it’s impossible to move on. Forgetting? Letting go? Who can actually do that? Who can genuinely leave behind people or things they love? 

But that’s what moving ‘on’ means, isn’t it? Moving on to something else. Something better. Abandoning the past. This is what the world tells me I must do. This is proper. This is right. This is healing. This is the path to rediscover happiness.

What…a lie.

Opening my eyes, I turn to look out the window again. The clouds have cleared, and a vibrant fire erupts from the horizon, dyeing all the fluffy white clouds a burnt orange. 

Yes, indeed, the world is cruel. 

In this world, how many hearts have not been touched by ice and snow?

In this world, how many beginnings escape ending?

In this world, how many can avoid leaving the living? 

The world tells me that the dead leave me, so I must abandon them in return. I must move on. I must let go, must forget. 

I don’t understand. I don’t want to let go, to forget. I don’t want to move ‘on.’

Am I wrong? 

Yes, it’s hard to live with such grief. It weighs in my chest, tightens my throat. But it keeps the ice and snow at bay. 

Besides, the world is cruel. Time is ruthless. Whether I want to or not, so long as I live, I am moving forward. So whether I do so with or without this weight, with or without those memories—shouldn’t this be up to me?

I look down at the box in my arms. I flick the lock open, then lift the lid. Leaves. Maple, willow, oak, birch, ash. And flowers. Roses, lilies, peonies, tulips, and…bleeding hearts. 

We loved to collect these once. 

These dried flowers and shrivelled leaves hold some of our most joyful times and carefree moments. Moments that I refuse to let go. Refuse to forget.

So I close the box gently and set it down on my pillow, far away from the trash bin. 

Here, it will never feel the chill of winter snow.