A dialogue with my deceased grandmother through objects.
When “nonna” Marzorati died, a few years ago, I visited her house and chose a few objects I liked, to keep.
I didn’t know much about her, and I learned some kind of story from these inherited objects.
I love the gold pendant, and I use it often with a necklace, a beautifully designed text: AMORE (LOVE in Italian).
Grandma loved opera and used to go to the Scala in Milan, wearing beautiful jewels.
A unique chair: three legs, three peculiar holes on the extremities, not much space to sit on.
Beautiful design.
I asked my uncle, and he told me that it may be a milking chair, to milk cows.
He had it delivered to me in England; I used to meditate sitting on it (on a pillow).
I had great transcendental experiences sitting on that chair.
Last summer I moved from a flat to a house, and I hired two guys in a yellow van. One of them spotted the chair straight away and said:
Wow! That’s a birthing chair!
A birthing chair?
Yes! It was used by midwives in the past.
Interesting…
This is the chair my grandma used to sit on while talking on the phone. She spent many hours on that chair.
I have her phone too, a black vintage wall phone with a very long, curly cord.
But wait, because here is the weird part.
I got a kimono too.
A black kimono with beautiful flying cranes at the bottom.
I don’t wear it, so I contacted my Japanese friend, I wanted to give it to her.
She told me: do you know that it’s for funerals?
No…
So here I have three objects from my grandma, reminding me of birth, love, and death, the cycle of life.