A Vision

The year is 2075. Two young adults sit on the wooden floor of an attic under a small wall of record cartons.

The pair has fallen into a recognizable rhythm: grab a box, open the lid, peer inside, pull things out, laugh, read, question, cry over the contents, conscientiously put things back in the order they found them.

“Oh my god, is this grandma?!” one exclaims to the other, carefully holding out a photograph in a mylar sleeve. “You have the same exact nose!”

It continues like this for some time.

Then, one opens the lid of a box and finds a small pile of fabric. For a moment, there is bewilderment, but then, one by one, they pull out the series of colorful face masks and place them on the floor in front of them.

“Grandma made these. During the pandemic.”

The other one walks over and the two stare at the collection. They talk about what it must have been like. The things they learned in history class (or didn’t) and the things they were told anecdotally. They find a very haphazardly kept journal, but Grandma was terrible at journaling consistently. The room is full of a sadness made of questions never asked when there was still time and the solemn weight of suffering only known and not felt.

At some point, the masks and the journal are put back in the box.

The next week, one of them calls the local Special Collections Library.

“Uhh hi, my grandma was a special collections librarian, she, uhhh, died recently, and when going through her things I found a collection of masks she made herself during the Coronavirus pandemic. There’s also a journal. Does the library want them for the collection? I would hate to just throw them out, I don’t know what else to do with them…”

The voice trails off. There is a beat of silence.

The librarian on the other end of the phone inwardly sighs. These masks are of no use to this library. They are out of scope, hard to care for, have little research value for this institution. How do you tell someone that pieces of their family history are essentially too mundane for anyone else to care?

The librarian, a supposed expert, doesn’t know what to do with them either.

“I’m sorry” the librarian says sincerely, before continuing routinely, “we only work with reputable auction houses and dealerships to acquire the items in our collection, this includes donations. Have you tried the local historical society?”

After the phone call, the grandchild is left staring at the box of things on their dining table.

Things that once meant the line between life and death for someone they loved very much and now seem to mean nothing.

SCENE.