15 May Nothing and Everything, by Nicole Strati
Marcelle Strati left Cairo at 18 years old with nothing, and everything. She arrived in Montreal empty-handed, apart from the hand that held hers; the hand that belonged to Elie, the love of her life. A decade and two beautifully bright boys later, she and her beloved family moved to a mundane Floridian suburb to chase their dreams. While Marcelle and Elie’s dreams may have escaped from their grasp, Marcelle did not allow anything else to. For the rest of her life, Marcelle held on tightly to everything and everyone she cherished. She longed for nothing, because she had everything. And I mean everything. My teta Marcelle was a hoarder.
I am a minimalist. I have lived in my not-so-humble abode all of my life with nothing, and everything. I have grown up with everything I could ever want or need, and more. I have longed for nothing. My room is a light grey void in which everything that is nothing gets abandoned. I have no use holding onto senseless trash. I see no point. Possessions come and go with the changing of the seasons.
This winter, my treasured teta died. My family and I escaped the numbing Canadian cold for the funeral, just to arrive in the perpetually humid state of Florida. The funeral was the easiest part of our visit. The real effort was clearing out the infamous home of Marcelle Strati. Upon first glance, it appeared as the typical cluttered home of an elderly woman, but there is no truth in that first glance. For every useless item I could name, Marcelle had three. Tens of ancient, unopened kitchen appliances, a hundred pounds’ worth of clay jewelry, stacks and stacks of old papers and cards, and more soaps and candles than anyone could use in the entirety of their existence. But that’s not the worst of it.
The real hell, the hoarder’s den, was the dreadful garage. Decades of dust, debris, and searing heat left the air thick inside. The everlasting taste of cigarette smoke greeted every person who dared to enter. Every square inch from floor to ceiling was covered in piles upon piles of junk. Three prehistoric refrigerators, five crumbling chairs, a barrel chock-full of moulding match boxes, an entire department store’s worth of unused toasters and blenders, and a stack of what appeared to be a week’s worth of empty Japanese take-out containers. These are just some of the atrocities that made up Marcelle’s den. There was everything— yet really, there was nothing.
Now it was up to us, the remaining members of the Strati family, Marcelle’s everything, to clean up her nothing. I made the courageous decision to begin with the barrel of mouldy matchboxes. With the help of my brother, I lifted the barrel up and out of the inferno. As I began to discard the matches, I noticed that every matchbox was identical. They were all decorated with an illustration of a potted fern alongside the words: The Oasis.
“What’s The Oasis?” I asked. In the midst of their own tasks, my dad and uncle chuckled.
“The Oasis was the first restaurant Teta and Gedo opened before it went bankrupt,” my dad explained. The Oasis. A refuge, a haven, a retreat from the efforts of everyday life. Marcelle and Elie’s dream.
By midday, the waste pile was humongous. I watched as my mom began to collect the stack of empty Japanese take-out containers for the waste pile, when I was struck with a sense of familiarity. I saw an image of my mom carrying identical take-out containers, but this time, they were filled with a colourful assortment of sushi. I saw my family, gathered around the table with Marcelle at the head. I recall that she insisted on keeping the take-out containers, while my mom retaliated with the fact that they were meant for the trash. Nevertheless, Marcelle, insistent as always, washed the garbage, packed it into her suitcase, and brought it all the way home to Florida, just for it to sit in her garage. It was apparent that these take-out containers were not kept for her use; Marcelle had kept them as a memento of her trip to Toronto, where she had a delicious meal with her beloved family.
My teta was a hoarder. She hoarded mementos of her dreams and memories of her loved ones. I thought she was hoarding nothing, but she was hoarding everything. Marcelle held onto everything important to her after she had to leave everything behind.
I brought a piece of junk home with me. Amidst all the other junk, I found my teta’s old watch. It’s broken, useless, and much too big for my wrist, but I think I’ll hold on to it.