Carry On

Matthew Eaton, Office of Admission

Princeton Writes Prize

I’ve never been one for traditional wallets. They’re way too bulky for me, and I rarely use cash when a credit card will do. Traveling light is more my speed. That’s why I dropped the wallet for a card case decades ago. Card cases are slimmer, weigh less, and are easily stashed in a pocket with everything I need. On a typical day, the contents of my card case would include the following items: two credit cards, my driver’s license, my employee ID, a small number of business cards, and a high denomination bill folded into the middle sleeve just for emergencies. I find a card case to be the perfect tool for carrying the other tools I need to get me through the day. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized my card case held far more than the contents tucked into its sleeves.

Sometime in the early 2010s, when my future wife and I were just dating, we celebrated a day of some significance. I can’t recall for certain the occasion. But it was on this day, having previously noticed the worn-out state of my card case at the time, that she gifted me a new one. It was an upgrade. The new card case was a nicer color, a higher quality leather, and more tasteful in every way. I loved it immediately. It was a great gift and my favorite type, the kind I could really use.

The contents of the older card case were quickly transferred to the newer one: two credit cards, my driver’s license, my employee ID, a small number of business cards, and a large denomination bill. Once transferred, I unceremoniously disposed of the older, worn-out card case. It had reached the end of its useful life. And so it began that I would use this newer, better card case daily for the next dozen years or so.

Looking back on it now, I realize how much the card case I received from her was always with me, by my side, and on my person. It traveled with me to a dozen different states and across the Atlantic, dutifully holding payment for meals and expenses. On my wedding day, the card case stayed secure in my suit jacket as my wife and I exchanged vows. It was with me at the hospital when our son was born, and in the car when we drove him to his first day of school. During COVID, the card case ventured in public with me, safely tucked in my pocket, keeping at least six feet away from the wallets tucked in other people’s pockets.

Sadly, the card case was also on my person in late 2020 when the doctors informed us that my wife had breast cancer. In the months that followed, there was a steady stream of appointments. She underwent surgery, then chemotherapy, then radiation treatment before she finally rang the bell to signify she was cancer-free. I was by her side through all of it. And in my pocket, by my side and hardly thought of, was the card case she gifted me years earlier.

Eventually, as all things do, this card case also reached the end of its useful life. The leather had stretched thin and worn, and the case no longer held its contents securely. That was well over a year ago now.

I was impressed it lasted as long as it did, but it was time for a new one. My wife knew this. So on the next occasion of some significance, I don’t recall which one exactly, for the second time in our lives together, the love of my life gifted me a card case. The newer card case was just as high quality and tasteful as the previous one, and the usual contents were quickly transferred as you might expect: two credit cards, my driver’s license, my employee ID, a small number of business cards, and a large denomination bill.

As for the older card case, it was not unceremoniously disposed of. My wife prevented that. She told me the card case was worth saving and encouraged me to keep it. At the time, I did not completely understand why. It went against my anticlutter, throw it away tendencies, but I listened to her anyway and kept it. She was right. She normally was.

The older card case, empty and worn, was moved to a small wooden box we kept on our dresser, shared space that held items we rarely used. There it stayed, mostly forgotten, until recently.

The second card case she gifted me is the one I still use today. It hasn’t journeyed with me nearly as much as its predecessor, but given time, perhaps it will. Regardless, in the comparatively short period I’ve had it, it has accompanied me through quite a lot. It’s been with me hiking through national parks and snowboarding down powder-covered mountains. It’s been with me to Broadway, in the room where it happens, and ridden on the train with me to Hadestown and back.

Regrettably, in July 2025, the card case was hurriedly stuffed in my pocket when I raced my wife to the emergency room. She had symptoms of a stroke or so I thought at the time. We would soon find out that her cancer had returned and spread to her brain. During the next three months, a health insurance card became part of my everyday carry as we frequented hospitals praying for a miracle that would never come. The card case was with me in November when I held my wife’s hand and watched her take her final breath.

A few weeks after her passing, as I went through the painstaking process of sorting through her things, I came across the first card case she gifted me all those years ago. I understand now why she wanted me to keep it.

That old, worn-out card case brought her joy. It brought her joy in the same way it brought me joy to see my wife wearing one of my T-shirts or eating the pancakes I made her for breakfast. It made an appearance every time I had to pay for something, whether it was ice cream after our son’s soccer game or filling up the car with gas before a road trip. And each time she saw me use it, I know it made her smile a little inside.

Both card cases are reminders of her. There are pieces of her love inside them. They have served as anchors for an invisible string that connects her to me and me to her, regardless of distance or physical life on this earth. I began carrying the first card case with me, every day, years before we had wedding rings. And it gives me comfort to know I will continue to carry the second card case with me, every day, for years to come, long after the fulfillment of our marriage vows, “in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

Perhaps someday, when I am old, worn-out, and reach the end of my useful life, the card cases will be buried with me, and I next to my wife. Until that day comes, I carry on and take the following with me daily: two credit cards, my driver’s license, my employee ID, a small number of business cards, a large denomination bill, and a piece of my wife’s love that had been there all along.