my crate

I have some very precious items.  I keep them in a crate, locked up.  I take the crate with me everywhere I go, but I only open it up when I am alone and have time to admire its contents. 

The items in the crate are brilliant, multifaceted, globes that sparkle and shine and send shards of color when the light strikes them just right.  They are invaluable.  More valuable than crystal.  More valuable than diamonds.  They are my memories.  Each of the globes belongs to someone who used to be in my life, but no longer is for one reason or another (death, geography, misunderstandings).  Some of the globes are bigger than others.  One of the globes is like the sun to the earth proportionately to the others.  But each of them is important.

I keep them in a crate, not a vault.  Sometimes when I am walking along with my crate, the sun will catch the brilliance of one of the globes through a crack and send back a bright shard of memory to me unexpectedly.  These small bits of glorious light are like little gifts from my crate. 

I really wasn't aware of my crate until Michaela died.  Perhaps I didn't keep it locked back then.  Perhaps I didn't feel the need to carry it everywhere I went, but was content to keep it nearby in my home.  Perhaps I brought it with me, but treated it carelessly.  I really don't know.  I know where it is now, all the time, and I guard it ferociously.

It is no good to have a priceless item, if every now and then you can't take it out and admire it.    When I haven't admired it for awhile, I become more and more aware of my crate every day.  I feel the need, it builds in me over time, to unlock my crate and pull out that indescribable globe.  To let it shine in its full brilliance.  To hold it up to the sun and let it overwhelm me.  It seems to shimmer and glow more often through the cracks of the crate in the car seat next to me, in the sunset over the river, in the music in my ears and the smells in my nose.  I am reminded of my crate in random phrases and foods I taste, until I allow myself the opportunity to revel in its contents.

When it is time, when I am able, I like to take it out and hold it in my hands.  To turn it round and round and lose myself in the enormity of what was.  I have to make time to do this. Time alone.  Time that won't stop life, because life doesn't stop at my whim. 

I have a vault as well.  In it lies what might have been.  That is a room that I cannot visit often.  The pain in that room is just too great.  When I do visit the vault there are repercussions.  It isn't healthy and it isn't pretty.  People who know me well know the difference between the sweet sadness I experience when I open the crate and the devastation I feel when I visit the vault.  I know I can't ignore the vault.  But I can choose not to dwell in it and live in the brilliance of the contents of the crate and the even greater brilliance of those I love who are still by my side.