Goodbye stuff.I just listed you on Craig'sList, FreeCycle, Hand-to-Hand...and soon they will descend upon you and pick you clean. By the time I get home, there will be nothing but a slab where you once huddled and prayed that last prayer, "Remember me!"
I won't forget you, picnic baskets that once held my creative writing in my little office in Ark City, you who were my sacred keeper of my current Works that no one else has ever read. You who served as end tables when I was in my wicker fad. You, who despite your frailties, worked hard during several moves, holding odds and ends swept from counter tops.
And you, dear old fake tree--how I marveled at finding you, at buying you back when at Hobby Lobby on clearance! How you adorned office and home for the better part of ten years. You who most lately have been festooned with Christmas lights, and who now waits some future owner to dust you off, light you up, right your trunk and basket with a little sand. How I will long for you when I see you standing so stoic in the background of so very many pictures, always there, ever-silent, ever watchful.
Alas, my long-time friend, my wife's body pillow, who offered her so much comfort when she was first pregnant. You, the quiet, almost life-size napping buddy of mine, now curled up in the pile and hoping for a new home. You who once served my beagle, when he would steal away and rest on you, hoping we would not see. I will miss your comforts, and I hope you find a loving home.
And you, dear old computer monitor--we shared thousands of hours of eye contact. You let me peer into the endless reaches of the Internet. You offered me relief when I tired of grading online papers by distracting me with zeFrank and Bored.com. I remember when you were young and fully-functional, how proud we were of you, how sexy you were, a black monitor! You offered the promise of a new life for us, a potential new career field of digital scrapbooking. You were our first best friend-computer, and we will be bff's always, even as you are hauled away as "junk."
Toys! Ohhhhh that you must be discarded is a pox upon all parents. How crass, how cold, how heartless we who damn you to be melted down or to spend eternity in a landfill, void of the playful attention of children, only to be pecked at by birds and cockroaches. I remember so many of you, and more--my kids will remember you. They will itemize their losses, and even if they do not vocalize it, they will harbor some hatred toward me for giving you away. It should not matter that you are old, so am I. It should be inconsequential that you are not in the best of shape, tattered around the edges--I am, too. What matter, that you are not all there--the same is said of me, regularly. You, dearest toys, are truly the matter of memories, the essence of joys innumerable, and you are now relegated at best to a less creative child who did not get you on Christmas morning or warm in their happy meal. You will, perhaps, be sentenced to the island of misfit toys. You could end up in the hands of an evil child like Sid. How could we do this to you, when you were perfectly content to wait, gathering dust, until my boys rediscovered you again, and then in some years, again. Some day, you might have been handed down to the children of my children, but no--you are being thrown to the curb.
Goodbye, my stuff. You have been sacrificed for Space.
Forgive me.
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