No one warned me about the odor becoming so important, that it will open the gate to a flow of memories. Every time the same pattern of feelings emerge to be played like an old video tape.

On the days following her death I begun to categorize, document and photograph all her belongings, garderobe, writings, collections in the possible most objective manner. My goal was to construct a scheme or mechanism of capturing memory. My aim was not solely to chase the memory of my mother, but rather to come up with a general method of stabilization. Concurring with previous expectations, my fumbling around her living space disrupted the order she surrounded herself with. As a result of the excavation I discovered new or hidden facets of her personality and unexpected correlations between objects, but it still remains obscure whether the entirety of connections existed before or were only the result of my intervention. One could argue that there is no use of making an inventory if it implies the network between items to break up. Now, it seems that her memory would have been better and longer preserved — although hidden — if I left everything intact instead.

Today I gave away her clothes.

Archeologists say: something buried for a long time is better kept that way. I guess what they mean by this is that exploration supports understanding, but later down the road artifacts may be never again returned to their state closest to original. The context preserved underground may not be reproduced in the open, findings will be scattered or in a worse scenario they will be lost. The excavation of ruins and documentation of passage may help to hold on to fading memories, but paradoxically it also speeds up the natural process of disintegration.