The invitation to visit the Botanical Gardens transformed, through a series of text
messages, into something Eleanor hadn’t expected. Martin had asked if, before their
planned outing, she might be interested in seeing his new apartment. “I have something
there that might interest you professionally,” he had written. “Related to your collection.”
Eleanor had hesitated, aware of the significance of entering his private space. It was one
thing to meet in public places—the bridge, the café, the restaurant—neutral territories
where their reconnection could unfold with a buffer of social convention. It was quite
another to step into his home, to see the intimate details of how he lived now, to allow the
past and present to collide in a more personal context.
But curiosity had always been Eleanor’s driving force, the engine behind her collection.
And so, on a crisp Sunday afternoon in early October, she found herself pressing the
buzzer to Martin’s apartment building in the city’s renovated warehouse district.
“Top floor,” came his voice through the intercom, followed by the buzz of the door
unlocking.
The elevator ride gave Eleanor time to compose herself, to slip into what she thought of as
her “curator’s mindset”—observant, analytical, slightly detached. She would approach
whatever Martin wanted to show her with professional interest rather than personal
involvement. It was safer that way, a form of emotional insulation against the complexity of
their situation.
The elevator opened directly into a small foyer, where Martin waited to greet her. He was
dressed casually in jeans and a gray sweater, looking relaxed and at home.
“Welcome,” he said, gesturing her inside. “Can I take your coat?”
Eleanor relinquished her trench coat, using the moment to glance around at the
apartment. It was a spacious loft with high ceilings and exposed brick walls, furnished in a
style that was minimal but warm. Large windows overlooked the river that curved through
the city, the water glinting in the autumn sunlight.
“This is lovely,” she said, meaning it. The space suited him—academic without being stuffy,
artistic without pretension.
“Thank you. The light sold me on it,” Martin replied, hanging her coat by the door. “Would
you like some tea? Or coffee?”
“Tea would be nice.”
She followed him to the open kitchen, watching as he filled a kettle and set it to boil. There
was something strangely intimate about observing these domestic movements, these
ordinary rituals performed by a man who had once been familiar to her and was now a
curious blend of known and unknown.
“You mentioned having something to show me,” Eleanor prompted, maintaining her
professional demeanor. “Related to my collection.”
“Yes.” Martin glanced at her as he prepared the teapot. “It’s in my study. We can go there
once the tea’s ready.”
While they waited for the water to boil, Martin gave her a brief tour of the main living area.
Eleanor noted the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the comfortable reading chair positioned to
catch the best light, the small but well-equipped kitchen. There were familiar elements—
his taste in literature hadn’t changed much, nor his preference for minimalist furniture—
but also evidence of the years that had passed, new acquisitions and habits formed during
his time abroad.
“The Swiss influence is noticeable,” she observed, indicating a beautifully crafted wooden
clock and several pieces of modern European furniture.
“I brought back what mattered most,” Martin agreed. “Fifteen years leaves its mark, for
better or worse.”
The kettle whistled, and he prepared their tea in a ceramic pot that Eleanor recognized with
a start—it was one they had purchased together at a craft fair during their relationship. He
caught her glance and smiled slightly.
“Yes, I kept it. It’s a good pot, makes excellent tea.”
Eleanor wasn’t sure how to respond to this casual acknowledgment of their shared past,
this everyday object that had survived fifteen years and traveled across continents to sit
now on his counter, still in use, still connecting them in a small but tangible way.
Tea prepared, Martin led her through the apartment to a room at the far end. “My study,” he
said, opening the door.
Eleanor stepped inside and immediately understood why he had invited her. The room was
not a typical academic office but a carefully arranged archive—smaller in scale but similar
in spirit to her own collection room. One wall was lined with built-in cabinets, their glass fronts revealing neat rows of journals, photographs, and small objects. Another held a
large map of the world with colored pins marking locations across Europe, Asia, and the
Americas. A work table stood in the center of the room, its surface clean and ordered, with
archival materials carefully arranged on open shelves beneath.
“You have a collection,” she said, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.
“Not exactly like yours,” Martin replied, setting the tea tray on a side table. “It’s more of a
personal archive. But yes, I’ve been gathering and preserving memories for many years
now.”
Eleanor moved closer to the glass cabinets, examining their contents with professional
interest. Inside were journals of various sizes and bindings, photographs in archival
sleeves, small objects carefully mounted and labeled—a metro ticket from Paris, a
pressed edelweiss flower from the Alps, a small stone from what appeared to be a Greek
beach.
“These are all from your travels?” she asked.
“Some from travels, some from everyday life in Switzerland. Moments I wanted to
remember, experiences that shaped me during those years away.” Martin poured their tea,
adding, “I started it after I left here. After I left you.”
Eleanor turned to look at him, sensing the significance of this admission.
“The first item I preserved was this.” He opened one of the cabinets and carefully removed
a small envelope. From it, he took a hospital bracelet—the kind given to patients upon
admission. The date was visible: April 20, 2008. The day after he had disappeared from the
hospital, the day he should have been transferred to hospice.
“I kept it to remind myself of what I was fighting against,” he explained. “And later, to
remind myself of what I had survived.”Eleanor looked at the bracelet, this artifact of Martin’s battle with mortality, and felt a
strange kinship with it. Like the items in her own collection, it was a tangible link to a
moment of transition, a physical representation of passage from one state to another.
“May I?” she asked, extending her hand.
Martin placed the bracelet on her palm. It was lightweight, clinical, unremarkable in its
plastic simplicity. Yet it carried the weight of his entire journey—the diagnosis, the fear, the
flight to Switzerland, the experimental treatment, the years of recovery, the eventual
return.
“This would be classified as a medical farewell in my taxonomy,” Eleanor said, examining it
with curator’s eyes. “A goodbye to illness, to patient status, to the identity of the terminally
ill.”
“That’s a perceptive way to frame it,” Martin replied. “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms,
but yes, it was a farewell of sorts. To the life I thought I was about to lose, and to the person
I thought I had to become in order to spare you pain.”
Eleanor returned the bracelet to him, their fingers brushing briefly during the exchange. She
was struck by the parallel paths they had traveled—both preserving artifacts, both creating
personal archives, both trying to make sense of separation and transition through the
careful cataloguing of physical objects.
“When did you begin your formal collection of goodbyes?” Martin asked as he returned the
bracelet to its cabinet. “I know you were always interested in farewells, even when we were
together, but when did it become the structured archive it is now?”
Eleanor considered the question as she accepted the cup of tea he offered. “About a year
after you disappeared. I had been informally collecting mementos of endings for years—
since childhood, really, since my father left. But it wasn’t until after… after you, that I began
to develop the taxonomy, the preservation techniques, the scholarly approach.””So in a way, our goodbye was a catalyst.”
“It was,” Eleanor acknowledged. “Though I wouldn’t have called it a goodbye then. It felt
more like an abandonment, an interruption. A story cut off mid-sentence.”
Martin nodded, accepting this assessment without defense. “And now? Now that we’ve
had our proper farewell at the bridge? How would you classify what’s happening between
us?”
It was the question that had been haunting Eleanor since their dinner, the curator’s
dilemma she had yet to resolve. How did one catalog an ending that refused to end, a
goodbye that circled back to hello?
“I’m still working on that classification,” she admitted. “It doesn’t fit neatly into my existing
taxonomy.”
“Perhaps it needs a new category entirely,” Martin suggested, gesturing to the room around
them. “That’s what I did with this archive. I created new classifications as new experiences
demanded them.”
Eleanor moved from the cabinets to the map on the wall, studying the colored pins with
interest. “What do these represent?”
“Places of significance.” Martin came to stand beside her, close but not touching. “Red
pins are medical treatments—hospitals, clinics, specialists I consulted. Blue are places I
lived—apartments, temporary rentals, the house I eventually bought outside Zurich. Green
are moments of transformation—spots where I made important decisions, had
realizations, felt myself changing in some fundamental way.”
Eleanor was drawn to a cluster of green pins in what appeared to be the Alps. “And these?”
“Hiking trails in the mountains near my home. I went there often during recovery, when I
was strong enough to walk but still too weak for normal activities. Being in the mountains,confronting that vastness, that ancient endurance… it puts human concerns in
perspective.” He paused, then added softly, “I thought of you there. Wondered what you
would make of those views, those moments.”
The admission hung in the air between them, simple yet laden with meaning. Eleanor
sipped her tea, using the moment to gather her thoughts, to maintain the professional
distance she had determined to keep during this visit.
“Your archive is impressively organized,” she said, returning to safer ground. “The
preservation techniques are quite good.”
“I had an excellent model to follow,” Martin replied with a small smile. “I read every article
you published on archival methods for ephemera and personal artifacts. Your paper on
‘The Conservation of Emotional Relics’ was particularly helpful.”
Eleanor felt a flush of pleasure at this professional compliment, even as she registered the
strangeness of Martin having studied her work from afar, having followed her career
development while she believed him long dead.
“There’s more I’d like to show you,” he said, moving to a cabinet on the far wall. “Something
I think will interest you particularly, given your collection.”
He unlocked the cabinet and carefully removed a leather-bound album, placing it on the
work table and motioning for Eleanor to join him. As she drew closer, she saw that the
album was not a photo book as she had first assumed, but something more akin to a
scientific specimen collection.
“What is this?” she asked, her curiosity fully engaged now.
“My own collection of goodbyes,” Martin said quietly. “Though from a different perspective
than yours.”He opened the album to reveal pages of carefully preserved letters, cards, and notes. Each
was mounted with archival corners on acid-free paper, with meticulous notations beside
them recording dates, contexts, and other relevant details.
“These are letters I wrote but never sent,” Martin explained. “Goodbyes I composed but
couldn’t deliver. Most of them are to you.”
Eleanor stared at the pages, at the familiar handwriting she had recognized immediately on
the envelope that had arrived three months ago, breaking open fifteen years of silence.
There were dozens of letters, spanning what appeared to be the entire period of their
separation.
“You wrote to me all this time?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Not consistently, but yes, over the years. Whenever I reached a milestone in treatment.
Whenever I saw something that reminded me of you. Whenever I read about an
achievement of yours or a new development in your collection.” Martin turned a page,
revealing more letters. “I wrote the first one the night I left the hospital. I knew I was doing
something unforgivable by disappearing, but I couldn’t bring myself to face you with my
decision. So I wrote instead, explaining everything. But I never sent it.”
“Why not?”
“Because sending it would have invited a response. And I wasn’t strong enough then to
hear what you might have said—your anger, your pain, your potential rejection of my
choice. Or worse, your insistence on following me to Switzerland, on witnessing what I was
certain would be a failed last attempt at treatment.”
Eleanor turned the pages slowly, seeing dates that corresponded to major events in both
their lives—his first remission confirmation, her first major exhibition, his five-year cancerfree milestone, her feature in The New Yorker. Fifteen years of one-sided correspondence,
of interrupted communication, of goodbyes that were composed but never delivered.”This is extraordinary,” she said, the curator in her genuinely impressed by the
thoroughness of the archive. “A collection of unsent farewells. I’ve never seen anything like
it.”
“I thought it might interest you professionally,” Martin said. “But I also wanted you to know
that the silence between us wasn’t as complete as it seemed. At least not from my side. I
was still talking to you, in my way. Still connecting, even if you couldn’t hear me.”
Eleanor continued to study the album, reading fragments of the letters, noting the
evolution in Martin’s handwriting over the years—stronger as his health improved, more
confident as his new life took shape. She was aware of the profound intimacy of what he
was sharing, this archive of his inner dialogue with her absence, this record of his struggle
to reconcile his choice with its consequences.
“There’s one more thing,” Martin said, turning to the last page of the album. There,
mounted in the center, was a single sheet of paper containing just seven words:
I never actually said goodbye, did I?
Eleanor recognized it immediately as the note he had sent her three months ago, the
catalyst that had brought them to the bridge, to the completion of their long-delayed
farewell, to this strange new territory they now inhabited together.
“The only one I ever sent,” Martin said quietly. “After fifteen years of writing to you in
silence, those seven words were all I could finally bring myself to deliver.”
Eleanor closed the album gently, overwhelmed by what she had seen. Martin’s archive was
a mirror image of her own collection—where she had preserved the artifacts of completed
goodbyes, he had catalogued the farewell letters never sent, the communications
composed but withheld. Together, they formed a complete circuit of separation, a full
accounting of their fifteen-year silence from both sides.”Why show me this now?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Because I want you to understand what these past months have meant to me,” Martin
replied. “Reconnecting with you isn’t some casual whim or nostalgic impulse. It’s the
conclusion of fifteen years of conversation I’ve been having with your memory, with the
idea of you. And now, remarkably, with the actual you.” He paused, choosing his words
carefully. “I know you’re still deciding how to classify what’s happening between us. I just
wanted you to see how I’ve classified it in my own archive.”
Eleanor glanced around the room, at Martin’s carefully preserved memories, his
meticulously documented journey, his map of transformative moments. Like her, he had
found meaning in the organization of experience, in the taxonomical approach to life’s
transitions. But unlike her collection, which focused primarily on endings, his archive
encompassed the full spectrum—endings, survivals, transformations, and beginnings.
“Thank you for showing me this,” she said, genuine appreciation in her voice. “It’s a
remarkable archive.”
“Would you like to see the Alpine garden now?” Martin asked, sensing perhaps that she
needed a transition, a movement away from the intensity of what he had shared. “The
Botanical Gardens should be relatively quiet on a Sunday afternoon.”
Eleanor nodded, grateful for the suggestion. “Yes, I’d like that.”
As they prepared to leave, gathering coats and locking the apartment behind them, Eleanor
found herself reflecting on what she had seen—not just the physical archive itself, but
what it represented. Martin had been collecting letters to her all these years, preserving his
side of a conversation that couldn’t happen, creating an archive of unsent communication
that paralleled her collection of completed goodbyes.The symmetry was both beautiful and disturbing, a reminder that while she had been
cataloguing endings, Martin had been documenting the words he couldn’t say, the
connection he had severed but never fully relinquished.
At the Botanical Gardens, they walked side by side through the new Alpine section, where
plants from the European mountains were arranged in naturalistic settings of rock and
gravel. Martin pointed out species he recognized from his hikes in Switzerland, sharing
stories of mountain trails and remote valleys that had become his sanctuaries during
recovery.
Eleanor listened, asking occasional questions, but her mind was still in his study, still
processing the implications of his unsent letters, his parallel archive. As a collector, she
was trained to look for patterns, for connections between seemingly disparate artifacts.
And there was a pattern here, a symmetry that couldn’t be ignored.
For fifteen years, they had been engaged in complementary acts of preservation—she
collecting the artifacts of completed goodbyes, he archiving the farewell words never
spoken. Both had been, in their own ways, trying to make sense of separation, to give form
to absence, to create order from the chaos of human disconnection.
And now, walking beside him among these transplanted Alpine flowers—survivors
themselves, thriving in soil far from their native mountains—Eleanor found herself
considering a possibility that her taxonomy had never accounted for: that some goodbyes
might be neither beginnings nor endings, but way stations on a longer journey. That
farewell might sometimes be not a destination but a detour, a necessary divergence before
paths could reconverge.
“You’re quiet,” Martin observed as they paused by a display of edelweiss, the iconic white
flowers nestled among gray stones.
“I’m thinking about archives,” Eleanor replied. “About how they shape our understanding of
the past, and possibly the future.””And what have you concluded?”
She considered her answer carefully, aware that they were discussing not just theoretical
archival practices but the very real question of what their reconnection might mean, might
become.
“I’ve concluded that no single archive can tell the complete story,” she said finally. “That
perhaps the most accurate understanding comes from comparing multiple collections,
from seeing the same events preserved from different perspectives.”
Martin nodded, understanding the implications of her words. “Does that mean you might
be willing to consider a… collaborative archival project? A bringing together of our separate
collections?”
The question was asked lightly, but Eleanor heard the deeper inquiry beneath it. Was she
ready to move beyond the careful distance of professional appreciation, beyond the
tentative reconnection of shared meals and garden walks? Was she willing to consider a
more substantive integration of their lives?
“I think,” she said slowly, “that such a collaboration would require careful planning. A clear
understanding of methodology, of boundaries, of intended outcomes.”
“Of course,” Martin agreed, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Any good
curator would insist on such clarity.”
“And it would need to begin small,” Eleanor continued. “Perhaps with a limited exchange of
artifacts, a trial period of shared cataloguing.”
“Naturally. Best practices would demand no less.”
They had stopped walking, facing each other now among the Alpine plants, the
metaphorical nature of their conversation acknowledged in their matching smiles, in the
lightness that had entered their exchange.”I might be open to such a collaboration,” Eleanor said finally. “On a provisional basis, with
regular evaluations of its success.”
“As would I,” Martin replied. “With the understanding that either party can withdraw their
artifacts if the collaboration proves… unsuitable.”
“Agreed.”
They sealed this pseudo-professional arrangement not with a handshake or a kiss, but with
a shared moment of recognition—of the absurdity and the beauty of framing their personal
reconnection in the language of archival science, of using their professional vocabulary to
navigate the deeply personal territory they were entering.
As they continued their walk through the gardens, Eleanor felt a curious lightness, as if
some weight she had been carrying had shifted, not disappearing entirely but redistributing
itself into a more balanced load. For fifteen years, she had been the sole curator of their
goodbye, the single authority on how it should be preserved and understood. Now, having
seen Martin’s parallel archive, his collection of unsent farewells, she was beginning to
consider the possibility of a shared curation—not just of their past, but of whatever might
come next.
It was a prospect both terrifying and exhilarating, like starting a collection in an entirely new
field, with taxonomies yet to be developed and preservation methods still to be
determined. But as a lifelong collector, Eleanor knew that the most valuable archives were
often those that ventured into uncharted territory, that documented the unmapped regions
of human experience.
And perhaps that was what she and Martin were doing now—creating an archive of return,
a collection of reconnection, a taxonomy of paths that diverged only to converge again,
changed by the journey but still recognizably themselves.Like rivers and the stones they shape, Eleanor thought, her hand unconsciously reaching
into her pocket where she had placed the river stone from Martin’s apartment—a third
stone, similar to the two already in her collection, which he had given her as she admired it
on his bookshelf. “For your new collection,” he had said simply.
Three stones now, from the same river system. One from their past together, one from his
journey alone, and now one from this new beginning. A complete set. A full arc. A story not
of ending or beginning, but of continuation through transformation.
For a collector of goodbyes, it was an unfamiliar narrative. But as Eleanor walked beside
Martin in the fading autumn light, she found herself curious about how this story might
unfold, what artifacts it might generate, and how they might be catalogued in the shared
archive they were tentatively beginning to create together.