My other sister sent me the on-line link this morning to the listing of "things". I saved the list as well as all of the photos. I've looked at each "thing" several times. Each time, the same emotions: sweetness, joy, bitterness, sadness. These "things" that can't be touched by me again. My cousin Kim bought the top that each of us at one point or another played with. I remember that much of my conversation with my sister last night. The top is safe. My mind spun away with the memories of it for the rest of our phone call. I can't recall who she said bought the pull tractor. I hope it's being loved as it should be. The buttons. Where are the buttons? I remember dumping out the jars and cigar boxes of buttons and trying to find matching ones, listening to the tinkling noise as I learned to count by dropping them one by one back into the glass jar. Almost every time I went to visit, they were the first thing I'd go for: to the left side of the door in the first room to the left in the hallway. They're only buttons. Why do they make me weep knowing someone has them and they're not where they belong?
How can 94 years be narrowed down to 73 pictures? I started looking up the significance of the number 73. Because, well, because that is what I do. I feel a NEED to make it all make sense on some metaphysical, spiritual, non-visible plane of my existence. 73 itself is meaningless.
When I looked up Psalm 73, there were a few phrases I connected with, it's meaning translated to "The Suffering of the Righteous and the Success of Sinners". Not that I find my family "sinners" for selling my grandparents' things(I honestly have quite another word for it), but I do relate to "The Suffering of the Righteous". I feel that my grandpa is truly a righteous man in every aspect of the word, as defined by dictionary.com: Perfectly wonderful; fine and genuine. And I feel that making him go thru this while he still lives made him suffer on some level. If it hurt me to see his things go, how painful was it for HIM?
When I looked up Shakespeare's Sonnet #73, I cried. It is a sonnet on aging and dieing, the last line transalates to this: 'This is something you can see, and it gives your love the strength deeply to love that which you have to lose soon." Yes. That is what this heart ache is. These "73 somethings" that I can see. They are giving my love for him the strength to continue to love him as deeply as I do even though he will be gone sometime soon. He told me on my visit with him last month that he thought he had another 4 or 5 years in him. I told him that I hope so. He said he hopes not. One of us will be right. Either one will break my heart but not my love. I sure wish I had some of grandma's buttons to close up these gaps I'm feeling lately...
Maybe I'll start my own glass jar. One button at a time...
