It's a cold and sunny Saturday morning The streets are empty of people like I remember from childhood. I walk down streets I have no memory attached to, though they are close enough to where we once lived and the school I attended one year, that I must have run down them with the neighborhood kids when we made up elaborate running games to pass the time before nightfall in the summers, or walking home from school sharing secrets with friends before we parted ways. There's the place that used to be a toy store, or the theatre I got cast in couple of musicals when I was in 8th grade. The oak tree that splits traffic flow and the church where I was baptized when I was 9 year's old. There are the houses where we had slumber parties or the one where my mom traded Sweet Williams varieties with her friend. The places that shape your life in subtle ways. Patterns and memory, significant in that you spent your time here, rather than there
I only meant to take a short break, to go get trash bags, the big kind and maybe some coffee that tastes better than the dregs from yesterday. So much still to be done. Yet the sun and coffee beckon, and it's,"Oh, I'm close to that house we lived in for a year, or where my friend lived, the friend whose parents grew vegetables and we picked ears of corn and ate them in the yard, or the hill we ran down with umbrellas and tarps seeing if we could get airborne if we ran fast enough against the wind.".I ended up at the beach.
I want to remember you and in the rush to clean, to give away a lifetime of possessions and things that held some meaning to you, I feel you being erased. Too fast. Too much of a shock. Not enough honor. In this state, so soon, how will I remember you?
So, I'm here, in this now busy coffee shop, writing this rather than cleaning out a closet. Feeling the warmth of sun through the glass, knowing I have to move along. No closer in knowing what I do now, or how to honor and remember you, both publicly and when I'm alone. And time feels short, so I need to move along.
