There's a certain absentmindedness that comes from the death of a spouse--from the death of anyone close to you, I suppose, but particularly from the death of a spouse.  Things have a way of disappearing, being forgotten, lost in the comfortable clutter of a life suspended.

There is no refuge here.  At the time when everyone else is cleaning out their houses, I'm trying to clean out a life, salvage a memory, and put things in their rightful order.  Order the brain to do what it currently resists.

First things.  First things first. 

Somewhere there's a suitcase filled with thisandthat from Santa Fe and Vancouver.  Somewhere else a bag with makeup from a honeymoon to Paris.  Somewhere else, a box of careful preparations for a mother's wedding, things most people would throw away, and those of us who go spelunking in our own pasts tuck into corners to uncover another day.

The ordering of a brain is a precarious thing.  

There's a life to be had, somewhere, picked up, dusted off, spit polished, tuned up.  A life.

It won't just do to put things back on the shelf.  There's a new life, new things to learn, new ways to order the brain when it wants to be in a hammock on a tropical island and not doubled up in responsibilities when brazenly halved. 

So the time comes to put things in order.  

There's a certain comfort that comes from clutter, the clutter of a life well lived, something around the edges, not always neat, rumbleshod, bits and pieces here and there.  I first realized it in the apartment of someone I once dated, someone who had no photos of loved ones, no books, no projects, no magazines, no evidence that he was living a life whatever except a big TV and a black leather couch.  There was no collectible evidence of an existence, no history, no context.  I wanted library corners and upturned books, framed memories, drawers of scrap.

The ordering of a brain is a precarious thing.  I've gone back to school.

There's a certain comfort that comes from clutter, the clutter of a life well lived.  Rumbleshod.

What we can't salvage, we store, comfortably, in memory.  These are the pieces of life, the life worth having, the life worth living.  

I heard tonight that you were gone.  Your cousin announced it on Facebook.

I'm turning back the corners of a life, excavating deep recesses, putting things in order.

First things.  First things first. 

photo:  Whiteways, The New Forest, U.K. - Kathy Riordan 

when I was writing this I learned that a friend had died

in loving memory

Donald Grant Moyes

March 23, 1955-April 4, 2011

requiescat in pace