I am a professional historian, and a nearly obsessive eye for detail serves me well as I reconstruct, for example, systems of urban labor in nineteenth-century Morocco. As I grieve the loss of my friend, I find myself sifting through the past--this time my own--with the keen eye of a practiced expert. I search, desperately at times, for tangible evidence--documents, photos, material objects--that reveal something of the ways in which my life connected with that of Maryclaire.
In one instance, only days after Maryclaire's passing, I spend an hour, maybe more, searching for a worn blue tank top that I borrowed from her around 1986. It would be a coup to find something physical that could be touched and passed around to our high school friends Susan and Cindy. But I can't find it. Its petite size, I vaguely remember, had taunted me, reminding me that I had gained seventy pounds. An unwanted reminder of Binge Eating Disorder, the shirt, I am forced to conclude, had been relegated --carelessly, I now chastise myself--to the rag bin.
In one instance, only days after Maryclaire's passing, I spend an hour, maybe more, searching for a worn blue tank top that I borrowed from her around 1986. It would be a coup to find something physical that could be touched and passed around to our high school friends Susan and Cindy. But I can't find it. Its petite size, I vaguely remember, had taunted me, reminding me that I had gained seventy pounds. An unwanted reminder of Binge Eating Disorder, the shirt, I am forced to conclude, had been relegated --carelessly, I now chastise myself--to the rag bin.