Another Rough Draft

I jotted this down the other day and I am tweaking it. I was really saddened by witnessing the elderly couple across the street sell off their belongings and move out of their dream home after fifty years there. Just doesn't seem right, although they are not the first or the last people to do this.

The old couple across the street

I see the old man shuffle to his car
taking baby steps with his walker.
When I see his ten minute ordeal
to get behind the wheel, I tense,
someday I know I am going to
have to go over and pick him up off the ground

It's spring, they are having a yard sale
they are moving to assisted living
we go over and
pick through their lives

The wife is sitting in the office
next to the back porch
surrounded by knickknacks, plates,
coffee and tea cups
vases, a wooden carving of a dancing
couple bought in pre-Castro Cuba by her parents,
an old radio, musty dioramas bought by the husband
in Japan in the 1950s and candlesticks.

How long have you lived here, we ask.
"53 years."
Young and married, buying a house in South Park
in the 1950s, back when you could still hear cows
in the morning in this part of Charlotte.
How far away was 2009 and frailty?
I know they had dreams, they laughed
they ate and drank,
now life is just getting into your car
without falling down.
It's nursing homes and two lifetimes'
accumulation of what is now junk to sell off
or give to Goodwill.

I see an old Japanese-made 35mm camera.
"My husband took slides with that camera in Japan
when he was in the army,"
says the wife.
I ask where the slides are.
They are in the room behind her
"I'll buy them," I say.
"I'll check with my husband and call you."

They continue the sale the next weekend
I go over and ask about the slides.
I'm told the old man won't give them up.

I understand that.
Sure, sell the tables, the beds, the silverware and the beautiful house,
but those slides, those slides
are a part of his youth,
before marriage
before responsibility.
Some things you hold onto until you kick off
losing them would be too much like dying.