All That Is Left
Three mismatched boxes. This is all that is left. Three boxes, beaten at the corners and held together with fading brown tape. Nothing more.
A man in a brown jumpsuit with a small tear in one knee delivered them today. He dropped off the boxes without a word, avoiding eye contact as much as possible. I imagine this is a skill developed over years of dealing with families, some mourning, some angry, some just lost. He might have started this delivery career with a simple ‘I’m sorry,’ but he quickly learned that whatever words he chose would never be enough. So, he reverted to the simplest of communications: a solemn look. That look communicated everything his words could not.
Three mismatched boxes, weathered and smelling of years of tarrying in a damp basement until they could finally escape. Sitting now on the beige carpet of my one-bedroom apartment. This is all that is left. The things with no value to a buyer. But not so worthless that they head for the trash. Things that may have a value other than monetary. Sentimental, I assume. Perhaps to someone, but not me.
Albert was my grandfather, and while he’s dead now, he was a ghost his whole life. We could always feel his presence at family gatherings despite his absence. Someone was always glancing at the door, expecting to see him snaking in and chastising the first person he saw. Our voices grew hushed when speaking of him, even when he was across the country on a book tour. Those always seemed to come up right around the holidays.
My dad always told me that Albert loved me. I don’t believe that. I think there came a point in my life where he respected me, but that’s it. It was just his way. You either reached a level worthy of respect or wallowed in the gutter. Getting a handshake means you made it. It was his way of acknowledging your existence, your ascent from filth to human. Never a hug, never a compliment. Just a handshake. My dad never got one. Perhaps that’s why I ended up with the boxes.
I’m not sure what to do with them.
I’m not sure anyone knows what to do with the ephemera of a life not yours; the flotsam of a stranger washed ashore. Those things of a person connected to you by blood and blood only. If only it could be washed away…
He is not this debris despite the name printed on the box. It is but mere fragments of him. An incomplete picture. The stories in my head are far more tangible. We all live on as memories, not things, after all. But even memories fade with time and die with the bearer. Then we become a whisper, a footnote in a conversation between people we will never know.
‘I never met my great-grandfather, but I heard he was a dick,’ my future daughter might say on a date when someone asks her what the famous Albert Lafferty was like. If she’s lucky, no one her kids meet will have heard of him. Even the famous fade over time. Their once great accomplishments become relics of the past, a time when people read fictional stories, printed on paper, written by humans. Imagine that!
But then again, when his whisper goes silent, the boxes will still remain. As much of a forgery as they are, they will outlive the memories.
This ignites a curiosity deep inside me. What will be in my boxes, and will I know their contents?
Which of my earthy possessions will be worthy of the box that a man in a brown jumpsuit with a tear in the knee will place gently on the floor of someone’s apartment without so much as a word? Who will fill that box, and how will they deem what is important? Will they keep my fifth-grade report card, the one with straight As across it? The movie ticket stub from my first kiss? My wedding band?
I’m not sure I should care. Part of me says that it will not be my problem, that it won’t bother me in the least when I’m gone. I’m not sure, though. Given the opportunity, I’d curate it like the Louvre: each piece meticulously picked to create a journey through years past. A trail of tchotchkes and trinkets, of bric-à-brac and knick-knack, of nothing and everything.
It is, after all, me. The me my family will see. The me they will gather around after my funeral to pick through and delve out. If they like me, that is. No one is breaking down my door to get a piece of Albert. He’s given us nothing to want. Each piece, no matter how pretty or important or memorable, poisoned by his ghost.
That is what is important. It’s not the things in the box that really matter, long as they might last. It’s the man they are attached to.
And that is something I can curate.
This story is the second in a series about the life and death of the fictional Albert Lafferty. For the first story, see “So Much More”.
