I remember everything
Things I can’t forget
The way you turned and smiled on me
On the night that we first met
And I remember every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morning light
like roses miss the dew
Things pile up.
Things you accumulate, and the time goes by.
Things pile up in boxes and get stashed away. Newer things outlive their purpose and broken or not, get stuffed into newer boxes, and the newer boxes get stashed on top of the older boxes, and all of sudden, pieces of your life that once greeted you in your living room wind up buried in places you never visit.
Sometimes, you have to stash memories away, just to keep going.
Memories can start to weigh too much, they get too heavy to carry across the new path that has blessed you.
&&&
We hired a dumpster, a big one, too, thirty cubic something or others, twenty four feet long by five and a half feet high and eight feet wide.
My mom looked at it the day it arrived and said, of jeez, David, that’s too big, you’ll never fill that.
&&&
The woman who sold us this house, this old new house, the kind of place I never thought I’d call home again, with the kind of love inside I thought I’d never feel again, left a collection of washing machines and dryers in the basement.
I dragged so many things with us, boxes no one had ever opened since 2006, when Lauren and I moved out of our last house, along with us, and those boxes filled the basement next to the washers and dryers, and they filled a two car garage, too.
“I can’t get rid of this stuff,” I used to say, to Sheila, to my mother, to my sister.
“The kids might want it someday.”
&&&
And so many of those things wound up in the dumpster today.
Some boxes I looked at and said, no, baby, these can’t go.
And some boxes I looked at, and though I wanted to say no, to keep the peace, I said, OK, I’ll part with these.
Clothes, wrapped up for fourteen years now, I said goodbye.
Our old checking account statements, oh, I held on to them for years, as evidence that once upon a time, you walked this earth, and next to me, and together we paid bills and struggled together to make the rent.
Let it go, I thought.
There’s too much to hold on to.
Things I can’t forget.
I remember everything.
&&&
Last week our son and I, and today, my brother and I, pulled off miracles, moved those old machines out of their basement homes, the places where they had sat unused for thirty, forty, fifty, even sixty year, we moved them out, straining with all our might, out of the basement and into a dumpster that would take them to their final resting places.
&&&
I fished through some of the debris, just to make sure we didn’t let something go that should have stayed.
Her old stuffed animals that we had decided to donate in hope they’d find another child to love them.
So many things we never used, things that an entire generation had lived without.
Hard to admit now, but most of it, with the passing of time, it had passed from things I couldn’t let go of into garbage.
&&&
Something at the bottom of a pile shone back at me and I took a look.
Two tiny picture frames, with a Christmas theme.
I looked at the pictures inside of them.
Myself, with a red fleece jacket she had bought me for Christmas in 1994. Her, with that smile, with those ocean eyes of blue, smiling a smile that could have lit up an entire city.
I picked up those frames, stuffed them into my left pocket.
I can let go of a lot, I thought, but I can’t let go of these.
&&&
Tomorrow, we’ll finish it off.
Clear out the last bits left in the garage.
Maybe we’ll fit our cars in there during the long, cold winter.
Sheila has already started setting up a little art studio out there, and when the sun sets tomorrow, she’ll have more room out there than she ever dreamed of.
She’ll stand out there alone someday, and paint to her heart’s content, while I stand in the kitchen and look out at her from the back window as I cook her dinner.
She’ll have some space to herself, space once filled with things I don’t use anymore.
I don’t need them anymore. It’s OK to let them go.
I don’t need them anymore.
Because I remember everything. Things I can’t forget.
