what gets left behind

A few weeks ago BC's tool trailer was stolen from our driveway.  Today it was recovered minus the tools and loaded with the stuff of someone else's life.

Mostly stuff from a 20 something year old chick- a chick just like my sister Wendi had been.  A woman living out of a backpack, hanging onto the wrong type of men, lugging around a folder of past due bills and court papers- hints that she might have a child.

Clothes, towels, empty perfume bottles.
Notebooks, bills, blankets.

It's surreal to stand in the middle of "her" stuff at the end of a hot July.  Surreal to be caught so suddenly by the irony of it all.

Two or so weeks ago "they" sorted through BC's stuff looking for anything worth having and here we are now sorting through theirs.  And almost, what? 11-12 years nearly to the day of doing this for my sister.  Hauling away in black trash bags all that she left behind from her tiny, stale apartment.  Cleaning her blood off the bathroom floor that she died on.  Turning off the fan and closing the door behind me.

I felt like this past year my sister and her death hasn't haunted me... but in a gas station bathroom in Arizona I felt the nearness of her death date crawling in through the heat.

Your body just knows.

The memory makes all bathrooms suspicious.  All fans triggers.  Painted stairs stomach turning.  And then there were the flies.

It is the smell of something resting- resting forever.

The feel of July.  Hot and dry, overcast with moldy night clouds dragging stones across the sky.

The weight of what came next.  The slow descent into silence.  I can almost remember what it was like.

The police believe the items in the trailer are directly related to the people who stole it form us and therefore are not stolen goods.  Well right, who would steal this sort of shit; cheap shoes, diaries, dirty clothing. So BC and I and BC's worker Miguel sorted through the bags and boxes looking for anything helpful to turn over.  The police apologized for leaving us such a mess to deal with.  All they want were the papers and ID's.

We were left with the task of throwing out this woman's life. I felt horrible that she had lost all her stuff.  All this junk was all she might have had.  It was all that she was, or was able to hold onto.

I can't help but to know that she is someone, somewhere with feelings and fears.

And yet at the same time I want revenge for what they had done to us.  I want them to be punished.  But I would trade justice to be able to un-see her and her life.

I wasn't much help.  I would pick up a bag and begin search through it.  At the bottom was always the same thing; me saying, "This chick is just like my sister...."  At some point well before the job was done, I stopped and walked away.

I have already done this once.  I don't need to do this ever again.