dust to dust

I can admit I bribed her to help me.  Not that I had to but I did.  I dropped her off at home to get started and I walked the half block south to fetch an oreo shake.

It was supposed to be a pretty straight forward project. Clean out 3 dressers, move them around, pack a load (or 2) to donate, and list a few of the furniture items we no longer need on KSL.   

"Did everyone have this much music?" She asked wading through a dusty drawer of CD's and yes, tapes.  Something BC was assigned to do years and years ago. 

Before you, we always listened to music...

Before you.  She accuses me of saying it all the time.  Before you, we swam every night.  Before you, we took sunset hikes.  Before you...

But it's true.  Life before Beach was different.  It was slower.  It was two families dating each other.  His one child and my two. We were all on our best and our worse behavior.

There were lines of his and hers drawn all over the place.  Two sets of family traditions, 2 ex's, 3 households. It was Beach that changed all that.     

Life before Beach and life after Beach.  She made all of us make sense.  She tied us together and erased the lines.  It only seems right she would be the last child here. The child sorting through the remains of a family.  The family she created.  Helping me decide what stays and what goes.  Knowing the difference between what matters now and what mattered when. 

In my lifetime I have three times cleaned out the living spaces the dead left behind.  One old and ready to go, one just ready, and the other too haunted by life to live, afraid to die but gone all the same. 

I think about it a lot.  Not the death part but the remains part.  What would I want to leave? How much am I willing to hold on to?  And why?  What is the value of objects versus the value of freedom?

Our passion for vintage and rare walks us straight down the whale bones.  Ghost towns and desert roads.  I like abandoned places.  I like to see what gone looks likes.  I am drawn towards emptiness.

Clutter is my number one trigger for anxiety but the house on 10th West (and its male owner) likes junk.             

Despite BC's best efforts to collect and hoard the house is thinning.  We are all growing up.

Before you Beach, we listened to music... but then you came along and created a whole new soundtrack to our lives. 

I can see the end.  Forts made of blankets and bedtime stories are being put away. 

I see a field of golden grass blending in the autumn light. It is the hillside where 16 years ago BC and I laid down a blanket and a bottle of wine.  We planned our life together there.  In some ways we were wrong but in the ways that matter we were so right.

Our lives together, like moving through a house opening door after door.  Now they are all open and we find ourselves standing on the back porch.  Staring out at an open field.  Right back where we started.     

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there." ~Rumi