Dismantling the Past

Here’s the china tea set bought many years ago

From that antique shop on the green – now swathed

In bubble-wrap and placed in a cardboard box along

With other porcelain memories.

The Paddington Bear I bought for mum

From my first wage packet ,resplendent in his red wellies.

Embroidered cushions fashioned by an aunt as a present one year,

Sit on chairs soon to leave these rooms of reminiscences.

Of birthdays and Christmases gone by; Easters with their bonnet parades,

Simnel cakes and happy family laughter.

The birth of children, our wedding day and my mothers last journey,

Fastened into containers for life anew elsewhere.

Open a draw or cupboard and small treasures emerge into the light,

Worthless to others maybe – to me priceless, for everything here

Tells a story; has been on a passage through time and played its part

In the history of this house, this home, my family.

Old photographs and ancestral  records in biscuit tins perch

On top of bags, decorations, holiday souvenirs and an old iron.

Bottles of whisky for gifts (my father doesn’t like the stuff)

Sit under the hanging remnants of my mothers clothes

Destined, like the others, for the charity shop.

The task takes for ever as each piece is lovingly handled.

The old, the broken, the chipped are discarded or kept

Sorted and wrapped and labelled or binned.

Seventy odd years of worldly goods divided into three piles;

My fathers, mine and the unrequired.

So easy then to dismantle the past?

My heart says not.

©JEFT 2007