into the kindness of an armchair, home alone, no TV, laundry machine, or dryer running; no music, book, cellphone—quiet enough to hear wind blow, rain plink patio, birds chirp? Resist the urge to do anything but sit. Notice the home around you—what you pass many times a day, no longer see. Not what needs dusted, swept, uncluttered. What you chose to hang on walls, arrange on surfaces. Start where your eyes fall first.  

A large painting by a dear friend’s only child who died young. A night view of a crossroads in a Kentucky river town, painted diagonally from his second floor—a dark diamond of traffic light, historic homes, bare trees, just fallen snow.   

Your grandparents’ walnut china hutch. The broken hinge of its lower cabinet not opened in years. On top, a globular urn painted with a Garden of Eden scene–a naked couple climb a viny tree. Eve’s hand cups an apple. The vessel holds what’s left of my husband’s ashes, those not already spread in gardens, forests, the Blue Ridge Mountains he so loved.