The Things We Throw Away

I’d like to dedicate this blog to the memory of Joseph Anthony Pegnato, who passed away at the age of 101 on May 31, 2026. May his memory be a blessing to his family.

Whenever I walk along the street I see discarded things. Bags. Bottles. Pieces of clothing. Newspapers. Lots of cigarette butts. Sometimes bigger things. Tires. Appliances. Pieces of cars that fell off during collisions.

And I think that every single one of these things had an owner.

At one point in time somebody would have objected if I tried to take that thing away from them. Hey, give me that sock! I want your car bumper! Can I have your cigarette? But little by little over time these things are discarded and lost.

How? Maybe they are unintentionally lost. Like the glove that slips out of your pocket. Maybe they are carelessly thrown away like the gum wrapper tossed out of the car window. Maybe they end up on the road after a vehicular collision. But at one point all of them held value for somebody. Somebody created them, or sought them out, paid for them but now they are discarded.

Some of the things I see discarded are heart-breaking. I occasionally go to estate sales. Everything must go! And I mean everything. Things that seem too personal to be sold must go. Combs with hair in them. A handmade book with drawings by a child in second or third grade for her mommy. Pocket knives sharpened over the years until both the blade and the handle hold the indelible marks of the hand of the user. Dentures.

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras reminds us

“And that the goods of fortune are uncertain; and that as they may be acquired, so may they be likewise be lost.”

And likewise Elvis Costello

“Yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper”

“Fish ‘N’ Chip Paper” from his 1981 album, Trust.

Cells that are constantly exposed to harsh environments, friction, or are designed to fight off pathogens have incredibly short lifespans. They are programmed to replicate, do their job, and die quickly to prevent damage or DNA mutation. For example the cells lining your digestive tract have a lifespan of 2-5 days.

Red blood cells can live about 4 months. Your bones are constantly being broken down and rebuilt, going through complete rebuild cycles every ten years.

And then there are lifetime cells like nerve cells, cells in your eye lens and heart cells that last your lifetime.

And then, the champion of them all is the Ovum. The egg cell. The cell that became you was developed in your mother when she was a 20-week old fetus inside your grandmother.

We like to think of our memories like photographs or videos but they are not. Our memories are constant recreations and remixes. They are different every time, but we don’t notice it because they retain core similar elements that trigger identification. The same way your face has changed dramatically since you were a baby but not day to day. You recognize yourself every morning, although you don’t look exactly the same.

Your brain does not store memories in one neat little file like an MP3. Instead different elements live in different places in your brain. Visual parts live in the visual cortex. Sounds and words are in the auditory cortex. Emotions are in the amygdala.

Each time you remember something your brain reconsolidates or reconstructs the experience. If a part of the memory has faded… what exactly did mom say… was it raining?.... Then your brain just seamlessly fills in the details (fabulation). Each time you do this, you store the memory. Over time you have memories of memories of memories. Elements move in. Elements move out. It’s like a stalagmite that has layer upon layer added to it so after a while you can’t even tell the original shape.

It’s quite vexing really. Because some of your most cherished memories might not be some of your most accurate memories.

You might have instances where you look at journals or actual photographs of an event and see that it was at odds with your memory of the event.

You might read the lyrics of a song you misremember and hear the actual lyrics and hear the song accurately for a while before you slip back to hearing the wrong lyrics again.

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” - Woody Allen

As an undergraduate I was in a class where the assignment was to write your obituary and then say whom you would like to deliver it and why. I chose myself for the speaker because then I would not actually be dead. I got an A on that assignment.

Prague Guide - Prague Tours

In the old Jewish Cemetery in Prague Jews have been buried since the 15th century. When they ran out of land, they were not allowed to buy more. So they bought soil, covered the land and buried more bodies on top of the original graves. Today there are some 12,000 tombstones jostling for space and some 100,000 bodies interred in layers upon layers of earth.

The cemetery sits several feet above the surrounding street.

Some things are not thrown away.

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