What a Glorious Day
The Other Side of Paradise
All’s Well That Ends Well
It’s not a part of anyone’s daily routine to know exactly what the next steps are, after your home is covered in volcanic ash so thick that all the garden plants lose their leaves and everything is left resembling a lunar landscape, with small and tall trunks sticking up out of the earth, like thumbs and fingers and arms, a sort of frozen in time whack-a-mole of headless bodies.
When the volcano blew, I was in New York, and my grandmother had been in Florida, visiting an aunt who was ill. While there, she decided that the aunt needed her for an extended period, so she bought a trailer home in the trailer park where the aunt lived, and set up camp.
After much contemplation and discussions with my grandmother about this situation — which yielded a mixed bag of suggestions, as she was in the early stages of a rapidly progressing dementia, I determined that we ought to travel back to the island to retrieve the valuables in the house. No one knew when, or if, we’d ever be able to visit or live there again, so it seemed prudent to go empty the house as best we could.
It wasn’t an easy trip. I assembled a team of about 8 people. Everyone agreed to help with the “mission” of helping Nana retrieve her most treasured belongings, or…
