“Many objects outlive people—this thought has often occurred to me when I see in a museum an eighteenth-century pianoforte or a twelfth-century sword or a bowl from 500 BCE. All of Vincent’s belongings and all of James’s belongings have outlived them; not a single item has left our care. There are Vincent’s many paintings hung around the house. There is James’s collection of pocket watches on a shelf. Everywhere I turn in the house there are objects: their meanings reside in the memories connected to them; the memories limn the voids, which cannot be filled by the objects.”