About five years ago, my father and I spent a week pulling downed trees out of the woods and cutting them into rounds for firewood. We then stacked them in a field, and left the to season. I figured that mom and dad would grab the wood as they needed it.
Well, that didn’t happen. I don’t know if they forgot about the wood, or if it was in an area they couldn’t easily reach. But that stack of wood sat there for five years, going to waste. We’ve been clearing trees on the property and we had several slash piles burning yesterday, and so I thought to myself that if I was going to deal with that wood, now is the time.
So I pulled on some gloves, got my grundgy clothing on, and started tossing the wood into the fire. And this wood was truly gone. Rotten, full of insects, some of the pieces even had mushrooms growing out of them. Completely worthless as firewood.
And as I’m tossing this wood piece by piece, it hits me that I’m burning up something that my father and I had spent quite a few hours on, both of us running chainsaws and just working like madmen because that’s what we did. It was the last year he was able to run a chainsaw, because the cancer came back with a vengeance after that, the Covidiacy made it exponentially worse, and my brother and I took over the firewood duties.
I was tossing memories onto a fire.
I’m not such a sentimental sop that I would keep rotting wood just because Dad and I cut it together, but I will admit to being rather melancholy yesterday. I got the pile cleaned up, we no longer have rotting wood just sitting around, but I did tip a bit more whiskey into my cup than I normally would.
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That’s been my last three years with regard to the wife brother:
Burning up rotted memories and drinking to much whisky…
It doesn’t necessarily get better but it hurts less over time.
And at some point you may decide to not drink as much whisky but don’t ease up to much, the liver is the devils organ and requires rebuke…
This hit hard. I also find myself becoming more and more melancholy over the smallest things, things that I had seen but not paid attention to previously. Mementoes of a life now mostly lived. Places and things from my past that seemed of no significance at the time but now have a hold on my heart. It is as if, by clinging tightly to these things I can hold on to life itself. Of course, that is not possible and I know that. But still, I seem unable to keep from doing it. And perhaps I really shouldn’t try.