GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN...

It's funny the things we remember long after the fact.  The Christmas tree I put up in my living room on the 1st of this month is probably older than I am.  In every house I've ever lived in, it's served its festive purpose faithfully.  It's around 4ft high, and its branches are supposed to bend up against its 'trunk' to facilitate fitting back into its box.  However, it's been many years since that's happened, for two very good reasons.  Namely, the wire branches have long been too fragile to withstand bending without breaking, and the box was discarded sometime in the early '80s because it was redundant.  After all, what's the use of a box if you can no longer fit what came out of it back into it?

It wasn't my decision.  One year the box was still there in the loft, the next year it wasn't.  I suspect it may have been thrown out when we moved house in '83, but it could've happened up to a year or three before this.  It had been a familiar object whenever I was in the loft, all through my childhood and right up into my 20s, and it's difficult to believe that it's now been gone for longer than we had it.  In fact, whenever I go into the loft, I'm still sort of half-expecting to see it, as it's so embedded in my consciousness as one of the loft's inhabitants.  Daft as it may sound, I miss it when its absence once again registers with me.

The box was approximately this size and shape, and opened at the
ends.  It also had something printed on it, but I forget exactly what.
And I seem to recall an order or address label on it

So, dear Criv-ites, is there something that your family once owned which, in the back of your mind, you feel is still around - until you look over to its once-accustomed place and are suddenly reminded that it isn't?  Some fondly-recalled item from your childhood and/or teenage years whose presence yet remains long after its physical departure?  If you're even half as bonkers as I am, there's bound to be, so share your memories of it in our comments section.

(And, in case you were worrying or wondering, my Christmas tree now has its own black bin-bag in which it resides [unfolded] between yuletide gigs, to protect it from the loft's less-than-tropical conditions.)