Impermanence

This weekend was a difficult. My grandfather is losing his integrity in the hospital after having five strokes over the years. He can't walk, can't speak. Last week may have been the last one. I am losing my concentration.

I am supposed to be studying for a midterm but instead of doing the intended and important, I distract myself with some wandering.

My mother asked me to hang some laundry--which connects to the essay we read--so I am thrown to the dungeon of my house for some laundry time. I took that as an opportunity to search the bottom of the dusty realms of my parents clutter.

I was magnetically attracted to the forlorn and neglected chest that used to inhabit our family room upstairs. I missed it. It now lives in the corner of the musty basement with useless junk atop it: a blue basket full of videos not watched anymore, clothes from the 80's, and a newspaper from 1992. The poor chest; it is sorely neglected, now banished to the Island of Shame or the Outsiders Realm; it yearns affection.

It is not necessarily beautiful, nor does it have personality. It is a plain dark pine box shaped as a rectangle; almost like a child's coffin. My brother used to hide in it during hide and seek. I take all the meaningless junk on top of the chest and scatter it around me in a circle of protection. It is my ritual for I am bringing up remains of the dead.

I am so excited; the smell of decay and rotten centipedes wafts into my nostrils giving off a light-headed yet familiar scent.

The laundry has become an enigma, a nomadic force, an alternative life.

I open the case and I am a child again; slowly becoming thirteen, ten, eight, six.

My mother, my sister, my father, my brother are all folded neatly in this box like a crayola crayons.

I find my parents old records; the ones that I used to spread on the floor with me as a child and learn about music with; Michael Jackson, Santana, The Beatles. I fell in love with Michael Jackson sprawled on his animal fur while he sang Billie Jean to me. I found my brother Ghost Buster's collection and my barbie collection and remembered our fights. My sister had saved all her notebooks from high school. I found dust.

It made me think of life and our impermanence. Prior that chest was living with us in the nexus of our household and was now stuffed in the musty corner of the dirty basement.

This morning my mother told me that my grandfather handcrafted that chest himself. Now it is stuffed in the corner with collected dust and junk atop it. It made me think of life.