what remains?

Out there in the garden C. was conferring with her brother.

What to do with the old parental house, now that their elderly mother had passed away, two years after their father’s death.  

What to do with the house? And what to do with all the stuff that had accumulated over the years?

There was stuff in the house, stuff in the backyard, and, not least, stuff in the extension to the house: a workplace cluttered with many cases, rusty tools, an ancient wooden workbench and no less than five old bicycle frames. Billions of dust particles were dancing in the light-rays falling through a window shrouded in spider rags.

In the overgrown garden a boisterous abundance of wild flowers and weeds was celebrating spring – flies and bees were humming, high in the sky a plane whirred and somewhere in a tree  a couple of invisible birds added their joyous chirps to the chorus.    

I wandered back inside into the house, through the once cosy kitchen into the formal living room with its sturdy furniture and musty smell.  A rather sombre, oppressive room, especially with the blinds drawn.

But the corridor was full of light, brilliant spring light streaming in through a window in the stair case.    

A transparent plastic laundry bag with a skirt hung on the coat rack. The yellow laundry ticket was still stuck on the coat hanger, conveying a sense of lively immediacy – as if the owner had only just walked through the door, suspending the bag on the rack to go into the kitchen to fix herself a cup of coffee.