She’d wanted so much to want the life she willed into
existence that year. The mortgage, stable jobs with 401K plans, her own car and
car space in a garage. But the life came with an actual person included, and out
of kindness to him, she ended the charade as painlessly as she could.
The next layer of boxes acquired in her college years
contained essays written in the lifting fog of drug-fuelled parties, ticket
stubs and brochures of random tourist places that were always seen as a lark
rather than what they really were—a way to put off the future, if only for a
few hours. Bottle caps and scrawled upon napkins that were talisman of moments
she had felt she was fitting into her skin just right. The papers, the detritus
of short-lived romances, and bug-ridden obsolete textbooks were dumped into a
growing black garbage bag.
She had four days to remove her belongings from her mother’s
attic before a new family moved in and crowded the spaces with their own
memories and rubbish. Since she had moved half way around the world, she had
repeatedly told her mother to throw out, donate, or sell all of it, mostly out
of a desire to not face the boxes or the visit. Now that her mother had finally
down-sized to a tiny apartment, she herself was forced to get rid of 30 years
of accumulated treasure and begged Lisa for help.
Lisa put one box to the side, simply marked “Dad”, knowing
that if she opened that one, she’d never finish. She then tackled the most
battered boxes, some covered in stickers which still sparkled and if smelled
closely, emanated a faint scent of grape and strawberry. These items had been
handled hundreds of times when she was in her teens but rarely looked at in the
last several years. There was the plastic tub of folded triangles, containing
declarations of never-ending friendship and recycled gossip. There were brown
stubs of corsages, rocks, shells, single earrings, and a mother of pearl
handled knife found on a day she and four other girls skipped Chemistry and
walked the four miles to the river. There were diaries with broken locks which
contained poems that were much too sad for the purple and pink heart-filled
pages. These bits and bobs went without protest to the bottom of the plastic bag
where they instantly seemed to lose their magic.
She surveyed the small dusty room, noting that the bags of
rubbish far outweighed the Goodwill piles. She tried not to take it as a sign
that there was little worth to her life up to this point. Sighing, she drew the
lone small box near her feet. She had never opened the box since filling it the
day after the funeral. She’d been told to take whatever she wanted but it was
obvious most of the treasures had been chosen long before her plane had arrived.
It felt somewhat barbaric, like they were all a bunch of scavengers pecking at
the remains of his personality.
At the top were coasters from pubs he’d frequented when he
lived in London. Seeing them always made her think of cosy wooden booths, old
Victorian carpets, the clanking of heavy glass mugs and his infectious laugh.
When he was gone, she’d watch “Only Fools and Horses” on PBS and imagine that
he was there, just off camera, maybe telling a funny story.
Nestled in a silver stein were small, greying plastic bags
filled with coins, each bag from a different country he’d visited or worked in.
Whenever he returned from a trip and added new coins to the stein, he sang
David Bowie’s “Changes”, leaving off the -s. He showed her each coin, making up
stories about what he’d bought---a sandwich for a tiger in China, a two-pound
bratwurst in Munich, a newspaper for the Queen in London, taxi fare on the
Amazon in Brazil. She’d beg for details and laugh and squeal until the sadness
of him having been gone faded away.
Stories of faraway places became less frequent as she grew older
and he travelled less. Conversations focused on algebra and college entrance
exams. She wanted to spend a year travelling while he insisted she get a degree
first, preferably in some field that had actual job prospects.
Pulling out the baggies of coins, the regret seeped in. The
way she’d ploughed through her four years of schooling, ignoring his calls and
emails out of resentment and spite. And the worst—leaving him on his own in the
campus town so she could celebrate her graduation by getting high with people
she barely knew. Though she didn’t have much, she’d give everything just to sit
and chat with him again. Even if for ten minutes.
At the bottom of the stein was a folded piece of paper she’d
never seen before. Opening it, she immediately recognized the imperfect scrawl.
“Your world is a big place. See it. But know that you are MY
world and always will be.”
She’d placed the stein and its coins in the donation pile,
hoping that some kid might be inspired to see where they’d come from. As she
and her mother looked around the rooms and locked the doors for the last time,
they both smiled, feeling the lightness of new beginnings. On the plane, Lisa
folded and unfolded the note, marvelling at how something so small could be too
big to throw away.
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