A Thousand Cigars

There's a part in the film "Amelie" that always stuck with me. Near the beginning of the movie, Amelie discovers behind some loose tile in her bathroom an old metal box of childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades ago. She resolves to track down the former owner of the box and surprise him with this treasure. Eventually she locates him and leaves the box for him in a phone booth. Upon opening the box, the old man, moved to tears, has an epiphany as long-forgotten childhood memories come flooding back.

Since the funeral, I have been trying to weed through all the stuff in the house. If you knew Cindy, you know she saved everything. And I am not sure why, but Cindy saved most of these mementos in random cigar boxes. It's possible these boxes once contained actual Dominican cigars. But, as far as I can tell, their main purpose has been to safeguard assorted items from Cindy's short, but quite entertaining life: a matchbook from the Cafe Du Lac in Amsterdam, an old Swatch watch, a 1998 dime, a photo of John Wayne Bobbitt taken at a Dominos Pizza, a grey and black pebble with a cross on it, and a sticker that says "I Saw the Flame" from the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. These particular items pre-date my time with her. So, unless she regaled me with the stories behind these artifacts, I am left to construct my own tales of their significance.

I also come across the boxes that contain memories from our time together: a matchbook from the Palace Hotel in San Francisco where we spent one of our first nights together, her 2003 medal for completing the Las Vegas Friendship 5K (a race she decided to do on a whim at 5am--after staying up all night playing craps), a movie stub from an Almodovar movie we saw together. And, like the old man in Amelie, when I touch these items, a rush of memories flood my mind and it is almost too much for me to absorb. It is as if I am transported back in time to the origins of those remnants. When I look at the medal, I can smell the smoke of the cigarette she inhaled right before the gun went off. When I touch the matchbook from the hotel, I can recall the bright light in the lobby that forced me to wear my sunglasses inside (for which she made fun of me). And when I think about the Almodovar ticket stub, I can vividly remember our conversation about traveling to Barcelona before we got too old.

In the movie, after Amelie witnesses the impact of these mementos on the old man, she resolves from that moment on to do good things for other people. I almost feel compelled to adopt such a mission myself. And maybe the only way to dig yourself out from intense sadness and pain is to think of and care for the people around you.