The garbage man is due, and we're bagging trash, trying to reduce, to simplify.
Deaths of those we love have filled the garage with things they owned, scraps of their lives, mementos to which we have weak connection, except as reminders of interrupted souls whose evanescence too few are left to mourn. We won't forget. So, out they go, most of them, and we feel lighter for it.
Then the open doorway stops us. At the far end of the garage, seen through the darkened workshop, it seems a portal to the next moment.
We step through it, through the rose of sharon weighted with blooms, squinting in the light, and cross the yard toward the house to pack.
We leave the door open.
copyright 2010 J. O'Brien, all rights reserved
