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The box came today, the one I packed with mementoes of her: clothing, earrings, rings, mugs and photographs. I didn’t open it right away, I couldn’t because opening it would be yet another step in the end of the process, a nail in the coffin, if you will, although she was cremated. Every step away from those painful, quiet, poetic days of her dying has brought me to tears: locking her apartment door for the last time, boarding the plane home for New York, walking into our apartment for the first time, falling into my husband’s arms and crying in a way I never, ever have before. All of it has been the first time that I am doing something since she died. And so, the box of her things, large and cumbersome though it may be, I will let it sit until I am ready. It is battered and taped more than it was when I left it with UPS. The corners are mushy and battered. And it is damp with the spring rain that seems to conspire with my broken heart. For now, I chose not to do anything more than look at it.
Two days later, I take the plunge, opening the box mid-morning. Upon closer inspection, the extra tape is for a tear in the side of the box. I worry after the fragile things inside, a few mugs, a couple of framed photos and one watercolor that hung on the wall of the house she shared with her husband over 20 years ago. He died, killed himself when the darling life…
