“Yes. And, like the earth, old and dirty. I got it back in a box of ‘effects,’ as they call it, when I was in England in’45. They’d been stored in Lincolnshire, in a barn near Branston where we spent the nights before the battle.” He said, “Getting the box, opening it, I myself as next of kin receiving the pitiful leavings of the deceased. Living the experience that my mother would have otherwise endured. This coat was the first thing, folded on top: like a body. A book, a few letters, socks, handkerchiefs, my good watch, a shaving kit—irrelevant overnight stuff. Through an oversight, I was alive to take charge of these relics, only lacking the letter from the colonel commending my valour. The colonel, who in fact had died alongside me in the action. Things, Helen, the sad silly evidence of things.” He said, “We’re told that possessions are ephemeral, yet my God how they outlast us—the clock on the bedside table, the cough drops, the diary with appointments for that very day.” And the meaning ebbing out of them, visibly.