Art Attack Central

Fixing stuff, myself included…


Third Floor Window or Letters From Harry

The “funny” thing is, when I really face/feel, rather than contemplate the temporariness of my existence, I no longer worry about little things.

What do you consider little things?

It’s not so much that they are little things, as it is they become little things in the whole picture. While each patch of a quilt is part of a large whole, some patches seem beautiful on there own, and some I might not like at all, when viewed outside the context of the quilt. No single patch makes a quilt. And one day the quilt is finished.

Are you sure you’re not sticking your head in the sand?

Maybe a little (there’s that word again). Perhaps I would like to feel comfortable with death on my shoulder, and so I imagine that I do, or it’s all just an excuse not to fix the third floor window, or one more attempt to ignore my lack of funds. But on the other hand, there’s no denying that my parents are preparing for “it”. I witness their courage, frustration, determination, grief and happiness as we sort through a lifetime of collected things. Some are easy to discard; some must be given to a thrift store; some must be given to a special person who will treasure the gift. Each object contains a memory, and we sift through those memories as we sort the objects.

Why would you want to be comfortable with it?

I don’t know; maybe it’s that I want to skip the hard part. The hard part is the loss of someone other than ones self. When I’m gone I won’t know it, even though I might know it’s near. When I was in high school I was in love with a boy, and I thought he was in love with me. He was a year ahead of me, and joined the army after graduation. Harry was sent to Viet Nam. He didn’t come home. Well he did, but in a box.

Why have you changed the subject?

I haven’t really. One of the objects that turned up in my parent’s attic, was a box of letters belonging to me, letters from Harry.

So you’ve experienced death before?

Yes and more. It was in the spring of my senior year, when Harry’s mother called. She spoke with my father. When he hung up, he turned to me and said, “you better sit down.” “But why?”, I said.

“Because Harry’s dead, and there’s more.”

“How could there be more, he’s dead?.”

“He was married, and he has a child. His mother (Eve) just told me, because she thought you might not know.”

The pronunciation of know and no are the same. And no, I didn’t know. So death is complicated; sobs are stifled, tears are streaming down your face, rifles have fired, and a flag is handed to a wife I don’t know, holding a child I imagined was mine.

“Only the spoon knows what is stirring in the pot.”

–Sicilian Proverb

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