A leather belt

An army-issue belt, from the mid-1950s.

Almost a decade after my father’s death, I found this in my parents’ garage, hung from a hook with a machete and golok; both were blunt, and as old as the belt. The maker’s name is illegible, but the government arrow remains, along with the year it was made: 1945.

There is a drawn-out archaeology of grief, as objects with unknown histories emerge from boxes, drawers and wardrobes. Their origins and use are inferred or construed from the signs of wear that remain; they tell cryptic, trivial stories, which can change what we know of the dead.  

That it was hanging in the garage suggests it was used to hold up gardening trousers; these, along with the gardening jacket, were also fifty-year-old kit: faded olive-green reverse sateen. Robust, hardwearing, both saw out their owner; his surname still sewn to the breast; stitchholes from long-gone insignia still yawning slightly on the epaulettes.  

The leather was dry and brittle when I found it, suggesting it had been unused for years. You age, you thicken round the middle; you no longer need the belt to stay your trousers. You take it off one day and without thinking, hang it on a hook next to the workbench. You will never touch it again. 

Soakings and smoothings of neatsfoot oil have brought it back to life. But back to what life? At what prior point in its life did it look like it does now? The answer of course, is never.