What we are left

The phone split the silence.  He was gone.  Mary Alice had been with him until his last breath.  The soft lavender of dusk edged the horizon.  I hung up the phone and measured my breath.  What was really over? The man who was my biological father had died.  A painful battle with cancer had ended.  What else? How much would be buried with Sandy at Arlington Cemetery?

You are a child.  Your days are spent looking up.  The countless things you are told to do are followed.  You measure your worth by your parents reactions.  I lived my days to make my parents smile.  Each child does that.  Careful what you expect of your little ones... all they want is to see you smile.

I remember the glint of the fading sun, hitting the cars parked outside our house.  The air was sharp, painful to inhale.  Gone, I thought.  But what is left?  I am left... standing here, remembering a thousand hurtful things.  February, I thought.  Remember this day.  It was a bitterly cold, yet sunny day.  There would never be another opportunity to make him smile.

Gone.  What was gone?  The sorrow, the pain, the shame?  None of that would dissipate.  We are left.  We the living are left with what cannot be taken... the nebulous strings, the tenuous ties, the heartbreak, the burden.  We bury and we carry.  We put to rest the vessel and keep the contents, messy and portentous.  We sift through the sands which are remaining and grasp, desperately trying to give shape, meaning.  We clutch at what is left to us and try to decipher... anything, something.  Death is a merciless angel; there is no solace for those who are left behind.

There is no reach beyond the grave.  There is no warmth, no embrace to remedy an old wound.  Use your time wisely.  Mend your fences while the sun still warms you.  Tomorrow is never a forgone conclusion.