Sentimental value

 One of my favorite Pink Floyd songs on The Wall, Nobody Home, starts out with a list of items around the house. I wrote a short story once and at the end the narrator is telling some of the details she sees around her home. I think about this a lot. It's a common fiction device. 

I have a lot of interesting things in my house. They're not necessarily valuable, but have  sentimental value, like things of Nancy's. 

I grew up listening to rock music, for instance, The Wall was being played in my tot days, and I was a real alternative style teenager in the 1990s. We listened to power chord music, wore flannel, and watched cool movies like Sid and Nancy, True Romance and State of Grace. Basically anything with Gary Oldman in it.

Nancy, my Nancy, was also a New Yorker married to a British gentleman. Fortunately for her, he was a real gentleman. They had a nice life together, played couples tennis, kept up with important friends. More of a Nancy Reagan than a Nancy Spungeon then.

In fact, one of my favorite stories of her was that she received a present every Christmas from a beau from before she married. I was even the recipient of a delicious pear one year. She was already passed on years before, but the gentle folk do things like this, sending gifts for the husbands of the ladies one has loved years after she's died. Yes he loved her, didn't marry her, and sent gifts to her and her husband each Christmas. 

They were childless, and after she died, her husband, like my grandmother who'd recently divorced, looked for companionship. He dated several women but chose my grandma because she, also a northerner, and brunette, a lot like Nancy, I believe, was a gentlelady. Really, aside from those things, the two ladies were not too much alike in tastes. My grandma's house reminded me of a little golden book growing up, and the Nancy bungalow had at least a dozen original artworks on the wall, and a very interesting Maxwell Parrish painting over the bathtub in their bathroom. A giant swordfish in the den, interesting decorations, wonderful books. 

My grandmother had 5 children. And they in turn gave her 9 grandchildren. She was able to give to Nancy's husband the family he didn't have. And he gave her daughters and granddaughters some of her things.

I have from Nancy some costume jewelry, not in wonderful shape unfortunately, a beautiful and beloved sweater, I think she may have had a fashionable job once, a few of her paintings, Christmas decorations and a childhood portrait of her painting. I also like to paint. I like to tell myself that Nancy would be happy that I was able to keep and cherish her things, since she was childless. It means a lot to me.