This afternoon we are going to hand over our house in Delft to the new owners. This moment had been coming for a while, ever since we decided to move back to Sweden, to the rural hamlet where we lived a year earlier. I’m going to miss this lovely house that we thought we’d be carried out horizontally at 80. I take one last lap. Because of the house, but also because of the memories we made here.
Places are an external memory. I notice it every time I drive into Julianadorp, where I grew up. Then I feel my body flowing in. After I left high school, I walked around there a few times. Because I had to return the gas burner I borrowed for my crafts degree. And with a reunion. Immediately feelings and memories surfaced. Buildings bring back memories extra clear and vivid. And can even trigger specific memories.
For the documentary Legacy of a resistance hero by Geertjan Lassche, the makers built a replica of the farmhouse kitchen of the family of the Drenthe resistance fighter Johannes Post. In that setting, which they reconstructed together with the children of the family, they conducted the interviews. Use researchers use the same technique in field research and use tests: by interviewing people in the context of use, more is revealed.
But what if the place disappears? My high school has been demolished. The memories that were hidden in those stones, I can no longer (well) reach. The external memory has been cleared. ‘The saddest feeling I know is knowing the way in a house that no longer exists’, wrote Rudy Kousbroek.
The house we are leaving now will still exist in the future. Yet I will no longer stand in our bedroom and mentally hear the late-appearing obstetrician say, “I don’t think we’re going to the hospital anymore.” I will remember, but not relive, how the boys screamed every night up the stairs to their bedrooms. At the most I can park my car in front of the door in the middle of the night and feel what it was like, coming home late after a performance.
My oldest son wanted to include a clause in the purchase contract that gave him the right to look into our old house at any time. In the end, this was not legally established, but the new residents have let us know that we are always welcome. I’ve been trying to prepare my son that it probably won’t feel the same as when we lived there ourselves. It’s the same house, but now that it belongs to different people, it’s a different place. Fortunately, there are plenty of memories that go with us to Sweden, our new place, even without a home.
Jasper van Kuijk on Twitter: @jaspervankuijk