lavender912

They're Just Memories

They're just a pile of memories.
Nothing worth fretting over.
Just a bunch of letters on paper with canvas bindings.

They're just an envolope of photos.
Just a few baby pictures and birthdays.
Just a bunch of images on photographic paper from the drug
store.

They're just a box of postcards.
Just a collection of places loved ones have travelled to.
Just a bunch of scribbled notes from exotic places sent by
mail.

They're just a cache of trinkets.
Just little momentos that bring to mind a place in time.
Just a bunch of symbols of intimate times.

They could have never gone with me to the next world.
They would have had to be explored by the next in line.
They would have been negligent in importance to most.

But to me they were my life kept neatly in a box.
To me they were all the secret fantasies and all the proud
moments.
To me they were records of birth and death, accomplishment
and failure.
To me they were the family secrets that were meant to be
passed down.
To me they were all I had to pass on. The genetics locked
inside my barren womb found a voice in my box of memories.

Oh Nay, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that you will never
read of your brother's first step.
I'm sorry that you will never read of the gathering at the
hospital when your other brother was born.
I'm sorry you will never gaze at the inscription I wrote so
proudly on the back of your baby picture.
I'm so sorry that you will never read of the way I watched you dote
over your baby sister.
I'm sorry that you will never explore the times I spent
with your cousins as they grew and made me laugh and cry.
I'm sorry you will never chuckle over my record of your
parents wedding and hold in your hand the little bag of
green M&M's my best friend and I sat up all night
seperating from bags and bags of others.
I'm sorry you will never read of how proud I was when we
went camping and you were brave and loved the wilderness
with me.
I'm sorry that you will never see yourself and the rest of
the family through my eyes.
I'm sorry for all that you will never see of all memories I
recorded, not just for me, but for the next woman inline.
I have no flesh to carry my cellular memory and so I
claimed your dna as my heir. I have no bonds, trusts or
treasures to pass on, only a box of treasures made up of
ribbons, ink, photos and trinkets.

But that's all gone now. At the bottom of a pile of
refuge lies our familie's history. Soon to be burried by
boulders and earth and eventually a shopping mall. I'm
sorry.

I'm sorry for myself and all the times I will miss going
through the box and smiling to myself as I remember places
in times.

And, I'm sorry for you because you will never have that
moment of exploration into my box of treasures.

I had hoped to die an old woman with the knowledge that you
would look back and see the young woman that I was and the
children that you sll were through my eyes.
Instead I will die an old woman with nothing to pass on.

Not even a box of memories.

Lavender Mace