326. Emotional Support Vacuum

What is the object that still reminds you of your dead loved one? For Nora, it’s her dead husband’s vacuum. 

This is an excerpt from an episode of Terrible, Thanks for Asking Premium called A Collection of Dead People’s Things. You can become a member of TTFA Premium on Patreon or Apple Premium.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Nora McInerny: If this were a video, you would see that I am sitting by a very dusty, mostly inoperative vacuum cleaner. This vacuum was purchased in, I’m going to go ahead and guess 2008. It existed in my husband Aaron’s house before I had ever been to that house. 

He bought it because he loved design and therefore loved Dyson products. I don’t know how often he used the vacuum. The house was not the cleanest place that I have ever been, but he bought a Dyson and he bought the pink one. And it was a special edition, obviously sold during breast cancer month or something. And… he bought it because he just thought it looked great and supported a good cause. And I can’t tell you how poorly this vacuum works now. In 2024, it does not work well. I am in a dusty room. The vacuum itself is covered in dust. I can’t let go of this vacuum. Matthew has taken it apart and put it back together several times. I am in touch with several Dyson specialists in the Phoenix area for a few reasons. One, I do believe that a vacuum of any price, but certainly that price should last you decades. My parents used, it was like the heaviest metal vacuum throughout my entire childhood. It was so loud. It had a headlight on it. 

It was terrifying, but that shit worked. Okay. And it was old when I was a kid. And honestly, it’s probably out there still working somewhere. I just think things should last. But also more importantly, this was Aaron’s and some of that dust in there, doesn’t matter how much you clean it out. Some of that dust belonged to him. And there are just certain things that belong to him that I can’t let go of that just feel like too connected. 

I have a storage unit filled with his things, boxes and boxes of things, things that probably don’t even mean that much to anyone except me and maybe our son and maybe his family, but a lot of it was just ephemera. I know it’s not just me. I put something up on Instagram and I said, tell me about something that you kept from your dead person that nobody else would really understand. And we got such beautiful, amazing submissions. And we got so many that if I read every email and played every voicemail, that we would be here for hours, if not days. 

But it also just kind of goes to show how many of us are clinging to these objects, because they do help us feel close to the people that we’ve lost. 

I got an email from Patty, a listener named Patty, that listed out some of the groceries she’s kept since her husband died. 

The half -empty cran -apple juice container that was in his fridge. It was the huge kind with an attached handle. His hand touched that handle. That damn thing lived in my fridge until bacteria started to set in. Only then did I finally pour the liquid down the drain. And what about the jar of spaghetti sauce? The bag of brown rice, the penne noodles, the last groceries he bought? What he imagined eating? If they hadn’t expired, I probably never would have prepared or eaten them. 

No way did I want to let those go. They all proved he existed in this world. It’s been over two years since he’s been dead. I still have his organic granulated cane sugar that expired 10 months ago. The bag has barely any left, but I just want to preserve it forever. 

I get it. I really get it. That’s it too. Like we can’t preserve the people that we lost. We can preserve their memories. And sometimes I do think that an object is a magical portal that connects us to that person. That I don’t know, there is something to the things that they touched, the things that they purchased, the things that they hoped to use someday. 

The things that they did use, even those really ordinary things like the aqua for or the bath and body works lotion. Never did I anticipate having an emotional reaction to bath and body works lotion, but that is the power of hearing your stories about your favorite dead people. Is that every time I hear one of these stories, I love them. 

I love the person that you lost. I have love for this man who bought cran apple juice. And then it sounds like decanted it into a pitcher to store in the fridge. That’s such a beautiful thing to do and not to just chug it out of the bottle or the carton.