The Heartbreak of Trash

Trash and Waste are two wildly different things. There is nothing that aches with waste. There's foolishness, as waste was something that never got to add anything to someone's life. Packaging is waste. The shavings from a piece of wood on a lathe being shaped to replace a leg on a chair are waste. That leg, though, brings a chair more years of use. Eventually, though, the seat will wear down to a point that the chair cannot be saved and it becomes trash. That's heartbreaking.
Today, I threw a suitcase into my trashcan. I bought it in Michigan one Christmas as the one suitcase I owned was in the Middle East. When I flew home to Michigan from Philly, I had all of my clothes wrapped up in a red laundry bag which I didn't know I owned. I bought the bag with my parents in some big box store and used it very rarely until this past August. It was then that I flew overseas for the first time. I went four more times after that, each time carrying this bag.
Last Friday, stopping at my last hotel before flying home, the wheel broke off. It was dead. So today, I emptied out the loose change, stripped off the metal for recycling, and tore off the "Sonoma" tag for posterity and tossed out the trash.
Trash is something that was very, very useful. Through usefulness, the now-trash becomes sentimental in the way that you expect it to be there. I would open my downstairs closet and without having to really identify the thing as my suitcase, I would grab it out and start packing. Sure I will get another suitcase, but I'll remember the one I used up.
In that vein, I just bought a car. My truck is parked to be used rarely, in an attempt to keep it from being trash. I drove that truck for the first time at the age of 15 to take my grandmother to a chemotherapy treatment. Illegal, but nobody else could possibly take her. It moved me and many friends to college. Hauled some couches and then eventually moved me to Philly. It moved me from house to house until finally I bought one of my own. Throughout that time, it took me back home to Michigan many times. The idea of it being trash someday is heartbreaking. I'll look at this new car, but I'll remember my truck.
My life is full of these things. A pair of boots I've had resoled four times now. My crepe pans and a hand mixer I use to make my crepes every time. Then there's the flip chair that my dad and I sewed up their first visit to my new life in Philly. I have every wallet I've ever carried, which, counting my current one, is only three. A little clock with a date engraved for the year 2020. I could go on naming most everything I own. These things all become more than just useful items, but memories in their own right.
Maybe I'm too sentimental. I certainly am given the nature of the mistakes I tend to make, which always revolves around something becoming trash far too early, if it ever should or could have become trash were I more thoughtful. But sometimes I don't make mistakes and the trash, like my suitcase, is inevitable. But it's still feels like something has been irrevocably lost.