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I'm in Ontario, and everywhere, there are holes. I thought this visit would be very different from the last two, but it's like the negative of the previous image, the mirror's view, because everything is different, but not separate. Suddenly, you realize the mechanisms that held this house together have disappeared. Toilet paper runs out (I can never remembering being in that bathroom and running out of toilet paper, before yesterday). I do things I never would have had to before... serve the coffee, clean up the cake. Before, this place was so restful but now, there is so much to be done! So much to catch up on. Groceries, cleaning the bathrooms, changing the sheets. Where has the once unlimited supply of Kleenex gone to? This is not what a life boils down to, but this is what has struck me as I walk in to it all. I feel all our lives are that much more scattered, because the pivot is gone or moved, or lost for now. How to live with this scatter, with the shards inside that still cut once in a while. I agree that I would like to keep them... in fact, I find more shards all the time... things I thought I had lost. Memories of moments, of words... I can't conjure them, but they have come to me. I remembered those jeans she bought me that I loved and my parents hated. I remembered what she ate for breakfast, or what her hands felt like. I'm glad to have more of the glass shards. Yeah, they hurt, but they are supposed to. It means they are still growing, you are still moving, and the pain is that reminder.