My dad is an archaeologist now.
He moves through the house slowly,
not to clean,
but to study.
Each drawer is a dig site.
Each object, a fragment
of the life he spent building with her.
His grief is careful,
methodical.
It gives him something to hold.
After the funeral,
he told us to go home.
Said thank you.
Said he needed time.
Grief, like cataloging,
is easier without an audience.
He starts with what’s closest:
her nightgowns,
the cupboard of pill bottles,
the hospital bed still in the living room.
Hospice came for most of it.
They forgot the toilet chair.
He put it in the extra room,
somewhere between keeping and forgetting.
He moves deeper.
Into closets not opened in years.
Boxes labeled in her handwriting:
St. Mary’s.
For Brenda.
Crafts.
He finds
miniature shampoo bottles,
sorted by brand.
Half-finished projects.
A list on the back of an envelope:
coffee creamer,
card for Kenzie’s birthday,
a phone number with no name.
She saved everything
because she saw possibility in all of it:
ways to use things,
people to give them to.
But the reasons were hers alone.
She had enough ideas
to fill a dozen lifetimes.
Dad asked if I wanted her yarn.
He gave it to me in grocery bags,
plus the blankets she never finished;
outsourcing this particular mystery
to my expertise.
Eventually,
he gets to the bathroom.
Installs a vent
thirty years too late.
The steam had nowhere to go.
Behind the wall,
black mold,
threaded through the drywall,
growing quiet and slow.
He doesn’t say much.
Just scrubs.
Another task
on a list
only he can see.
Some things
don’t rot until the silence.
Some damage
waits to be found.
