My father died recently, and I have spent a lot of time among the personal possessions he left behind, sorting, gifting, recycling, discarding, and thinking about what makes something ‘precious’—precious enough to keep, to hold on to for years, decades, perhaps for a life. In my experience, it rarely has anything to do with monetary value.
I remembered a guest piece I wrote for another writer’s blog some years back. The brief was to choose an object of literary value that was precious to me, but, as I prefaced my piece then, I chose an object that was neither precious nor literary…
***
Many years ago my father hired a metal-detector and went on a camping/prospecting trip to the Eastern Goldfields. He didn’t discover gold, but he came home with lots of stories. And this—a ring unearthed on the site where the gold-rush town of Kanowna once stood.
It’s made of thin brass, with a red ‘stone’ of some manufactured origin—the cheapest kind of trinket. But it fascinated me. Who had bought it, worn it, lost it, abandoned it? Did it mean something to them? How did it find its way into the red dust of the goldfields?
Years later, I went to the site of Kanowna myself—not to prospect for gold but because, by then, I had read a lot about what the town had been like at the height of the gold rush, a thriving place with a population of 12,000, far exceeding Kalgoorlie in municipal importance. I was keen to see for myself what was left.
I was shocked to find that the reality of an Eastern Goldfields ghost town is nothing at all like I’d been led to expect by Hollywood westerns. Our ghost towns are bare earth, razed to nothing, everything of value carted away.
But you can’t erase history as easily as that. Stories remain.
My first (and so far only) ghost story, ‘Rush’ (published in Inherited), came from thinking about these things, and I suspect this humble little ring has many narratives it could tell. But it’s precious to me for what represents. It inspires curiosity. It reminds me to dig. It makes me question absolutes like ‘deserted’ and ‘empty’ and ‘worthless’. It whispers ‘what if?’ What a writerly little thing it is.
Which I guess qualifies it, after all, as precious and literary.
***
Now, of course, it has become infinitely more precious to me—a bearer of the spidery kind of memories that spin personal and communal histories together, that summon a face.
looking up/looking down 
I’m sorry to hear of your loss, Amanda. The word I think of here, in regards to your ring and your father, is “touchstone”… as in, little sacred kernels, or even islands, of memory made concrete in the midst of impermanence…
Thank you, Glen. Very apt.
So sorry for your loss.
Thanks, Dianne
Amanda, my sympathies for the loss of your father. A poignant post on your memories. Regards Shirley
Thanks, Shirley
Hi Amanda —so sorry to hear about the loss of your Dad. But lovely post in his memory- best, Bron
>
Thank you, Bron. x
A beautiful story and history, and a moment shared of your father’s life. Thank you, Amanda, for writing these beautiful words – and to remind us to dig and to keep – items precious to family and to us.
Thank you for your lovely comment.
Please accept my condolences, Amanda. It sounds as if your father was a wonderful man.
It is five years this coming Wednesday since my father died, and I still miss him like it was yesterday.
My house is full of bits and pieces that are precious… a photo of my son that he framed for me, a bookcase that he built for my paperbacks, his driving licence that he never used because he hated driving, the Oxford Companions that he gave me…
I can’t see myself ever parting with any of it.
Thank you, Lisa.
I feel the same about the things in my house that are imbued with memories. I have no problem parting with things that don’t have those associations, but others, no. What some people might call clutter, I call history.
Sorry to hear about your father, Amanda. Thanks for this touching piece. X
Thank you, Linda.
And how your post draws together what is precious in loss, love and memory, Amanda! It’s like a little gem itself.
I’m so sorry to hear about your father’s passing. My dad went prospecting too, back in the 80s, and I carry with me on a charm bracelet one of the little nuggets he found – one each for the four women in his family.
How they are gone; how they linger and console. Much love XX
Thank you, Jo. Perhaps our fathers passed each other with their metal detectors sometime. x