I filed it in the safe. Do most people have alphabetized file folders in their safe?
First I cleaned it. Then I placed it in an envelope. I sealed it. Then I filed it at what I considered the appropriate place.
Maybe I should have handled it more ceremoniously. I was alone. I didn’t give it a great deal of thought. But I gave it some. I thought it through. Made sure I was ready. Well, is a person ever ready? Honestly, whether or not I’m ready matters not. I prayed a scattered prayer. I cried a bit. Then I headed downstairs and made my dinner.
Today is not a significant day. The fourth of May. People are joking…..May the fourth be with you. Funny Stars Wars humor. Tomorrow is my son’s favorite minor holiday – Cinco de Mayo. Yet the date today or tomorrow has nothing to do with why I chose today. It was convenient. Home alone and all that. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s time for the next movement. As in a concerto. Or, as many like to say, the next chapter.
So I did what I needed to do. A bit of closure? Maybe. I’d say closure is a process. An uphill climb. Closure exemplifies a new battle though. It’s time to surrender the original. Stubbornness or strength of will is not enough. Hope is enough to sustain but not enough to change the will of people. I will be alright. I will be sustained because my hope is not in people or circumstance. My hope is in Something bigger than that.
I have a feeling it will be filed away for a long, long time. Maybe someday it will come out and be given to my daughter. Somehow I doubt it. Maybe it will be sold because I desperately need the money. I doubt that too. Perhaps someday someone will pillage through my belongings and find it. Sealed in an envelope. No note. No date. No explanation. Just a once treasured object filed away.
Sometimes the shut door opens and you go through it into the same world you were in before, in which you belong as you did not before.
– author Wendell Berry, from the novel Jayber Crow
Upon a Sunny Day 