I have a tendency to hold on.
This tendency is so strong, I’m confident I will end up a haunting ghost in someone’s house when I go.
I hold on to photographs, to letters, to my child’s sketches. I refuse to part with shoes I want to love but can’t because they give me blisters; nor can I say goodbye to the beat up stuffed animal I’ve had since sixth grade. The t-shirt I received as a party favor at a forgotten friend’s bat mitzvah sits at the bottom of a box with fifteen others waiting to be turned into a quilt I’ll never make.
I hold tight to first impressions, grudges, undeserved adulation.
And then sometimes, I let go.
No, not just that.
I purge.
I prepare a huge yard sale and lay all my attachments on the grass for everyone to peruse. Everyone I know and don’t know descends on my beloved belongings.
“Please take them from me!” my eyes say. And they do. For a penny, for a song.
And my load becomes lighter.
If I were to die then and there, I could float up to Heaven like a feather on the wind.
