Just Trinkets

After my uncle died, I inherited a lot of small things. In life, he was not so much a hoarder, as a sentimental man, so he kept ticket stubs, buttons, dried flowers in envelopes, broken chains, keys whose locks have long been ripped out and replaced, small notes and memos, and so on.

I left the lawyer’s office with 14 cardboard boxes of these tiny treasures. When I unloaded them in the garage, they covered the whole workbench, which by the way, I never used. I opened the first box and started looking through the things. An invitation to a Halloween party in 1971. A belt buckle. A plastic beetle.

My wife appeared in the door leading to the house. She looked tired. She did not ask if there was any money, she did not make fun of my workbench finally being useful, she did not complain or anything. She was not there. The lights were on, but the house was empty, poor thing. I knew depression was swooping in to take her again. I did not know if it was for good this time.

She was holding a yellow post-it.

”What you got there?” I asked.

She looked at it slowly, then at me. “I wrote down a phone number, I was on my way to throw this out. I don’t need it anymore."

"Can I have it?” I said.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk