Outside The Box

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea

My mother crossed the bar ten years ago last week, and my father followed her not quite five years later. The old family home passed into our keeping.

There are a great many things contained within that house. My parents were collectors of memories. Great grandmother, Eula’s rocking chair, the length of strong hemp rope Great Grandfather, Will, used to climb down into the wells he dug by hand, hand forged farm implements, quilts, tools, documents and pictures were among the many things that were carefully kept and preserved. Every birthday card we ever gave our parents was there; artwork from grade school, compositions, awards, trophies, and toys. A history of our entire family was kept under that roof.

If you have lost a parent or loved one and if you are as sentimental as your humble scribe, then you will understand. For a time, we do not suffer a single thing to be moved or removed from the possessions of the deceased. Some things preserve memories better than a photograph, almost as if the spirit of the departed lingers for a while among them.

In time, we realize that our spirits are not, nor should they be bound to earthly possessions, and we begin to let them go. If you have done this, you know, there is catharsis in that process, and grieving is never finished, only deferred.

All of this and more have I realized as we prepared for the estate sale that will finally empty the family home and allow new life to occupy it, new memories to be born. But there has been an unexpected reluctance which has slowed this process, and I did not realize until quite recently what was at its root.

As we sorted through the possessions of times past, mysteries were uncovered. Love letters from one parent to another, four leaf clovers pressed in wax paper, birthday and holiday cards from long lost relatives, arrowheads, coins and scrap books were found hidden in nooks and crannies. One by one, the old house gave up its secrets, until finally there were no more to reveal.

We are a curious species. We love mysteries, and we love even more to solve them. Our curiosity has led us from the depths of the ocean to the outer fringes of our solar system to the inner workings of the atom, and our imaginations would lead us even farther.

I think, however, that we should not rush to nor insist on knowing all. Perhaps some stones should be left unturned, some paths untraveled. We need mystery. We need undiscovered country. We need wilderness for the sake of wilderness.

Imagine a world without mystery, where all is known, developed, monetized and surveilled. We are fast approaching that world, and since our bodies are currently earth bound, our civilization turns from pioneering and adventure to gratification and habit. You can see it in the way we walk, no longer looking to the horizon, but slumped over in the constant sharing of the disjecta membra of our daily routines.

In solving the mysteries of our old family home, opening my mom’s cedar chest and the steamer trunk my dad kept locked in the hall closet, plumbing the depths of the big steel toolbox in the basement, I confronted unwillingly an uncomfortable truth. There are limits to this human life. We are granted only so many days. We will write a finite number of love letters. We will find only so many arrowheads, and there is a number, however distant, that is the reckoning of our last breath.

One day we will solve the puzzle of our own earthly lives and confront the mystery of the next . We will cross the bar ourselves on a journey into the next unknown, and someone else will sort through the remnants of the earthly possessions we leave behind.