A whimsical, stuffed red apple remains on the closet floor. Not something my mother would have taken on the weekend trip. Also, not something she would have intended to leave. Truly, not a thing with any intended purpose. Like so many things in the home - whimsy, out of use, out of date - but holding, teasing her with some tangible leader line to a pinprick of light in the depth of memory. A tiny scene that will otherwise never play out again, never surface for brief, sparkling, warming recollection.
My cat is set down in her closet, safe from the resident dogs. And this apple is right there, among the otherwise organized shoes, sweaters, scarves, and a stashed bottle of The Good Stuff. At first, I give it no mind. But each time I pass through, to see how the cat is faring, I see the apple, and I think more on that than the cat. What was a stuffed calico apple meant for, before? What size dog, what size cat?
I think my mother's answer is not about the why. Her answer, for so many beautiful silly useless things, is about the who, the where, the when. This apple is the doorknob, granting access to her collection of lives lived that threaten forgetting if we discard all of the things they left behind.
I look up to the paper quite infrequently these days while I’m lying in our bed. I can’t really say that you left it behind either. After all, you did not write it. You did not tape it to the ceiling. You did not really even follow the instructions… like… ever. You were only a shell of your whole (real) self at that point too. Why do I keep it taped there? The lines of the lined paper have faded with time and sun. My memories are fading with time and sun.
Maybe for me it is a reminder of how far you went. Your skeleton lying in that bed. Your body trying to abandon your soul, and starting to take your mind with it. You, Alex, staring at the ceiling, finding shapes -and friends- in the paint splotches. A squirrel (of course… though I still can’t find it). Your last PT exercises written down, I taped them on the ceiling for your entertainment. No. I taped them on the ceiling in the hopes that you would be inspired to perform. That your body would somehow find the strength to lift its knees and roll itself over if only you could read the instructions.
The shapes you could find in the letters. The amusement from reading a few words in a sentence with different inflections. Days of entertainment. Of course you could no longer make the movement of a straight leg raise, or do ‘disco with a band’ for some shoulder movement. But your imagination was still as wild as ever, and you could make stories from an X and the shapes in someone else’s handwriting.
How long should I leave it taped there on the ceiling above our bed?
My first thought was to write about a sweater of my dad's that I took from his dresser after he died. It is gray heathered wool, v-neck, and warmly baggy on me. I can still see him wearing it, and it makes me feel close to him when I do. But then I thought about all the little items I have from my daughter. She was a dreamy, creative, child happy with her own company and has grown into a spunky, creative woman who still marches to her own beat. My Maddie Collection includes a small stone she gave me to "remember a perfect day" by; it sits on my nightstand. I also have a small crinkled note asking, "want to pass notes?", which we then did. I also have a watercolor she made of herself with a love letter to me written on it. It hangs next to a drawing of me surrounded by my favorite things and words that describe me. Both were probably Mother's Day gifts. I have a faded pink-markered flower that I use as a bookmark. What do theses items say about my daughter? That she was and is a lover of the everyday and the ordinary. She gets excited to watch a favorite show, to knit, to plan dinner from her new vegan cookbook. She sends me pictures of her bunny sitting in the clean laundry, of her legs outstretched beneath a blanket , of herself reading a book in the sun. She is a poster child for rich living through simplicity. This is her nature, but it has been a convenient one for the last two years of pandemic life. And it is an orientation I have found comforting and affirming as I have slowed down my own hectic life these past few years. Talking to my daughter is like receiving a big YES to listening to my inner voice and embracing the undersung urges of my own heart. Yes to more reading, more thinking, more meandering. No to mindless activity, underwhelming relationships, the status quo. I'm very lucky.
My husband died of lung cancer one night in the winter of 2005. He bled out spontaneously after an uneventful evening with friends. His death was the swift and painless transition I had asked G-d to grant him, and me just a few months before, just after his diagnosis. I had ask that G-d grant him dignity in death; there were no witnesses to this horrific event - just me and our three Whippets, so his privacy was preserved. Fast forward, well not so fast, sometimes life felt like swimming in quicksand- but I digress- Later, in 2020 my fiancé killed himself in our home. He left a note scrawled in black marker on the outside of the locked bedroom door. Barely legible because of his drug and alcohol induced impairment I can conclude that he wrote this just before closing the door for the last time, locking it and lying down in bed to put a gun to his head and rush into the unknown. His note said “ Don’t open the door, call EMS, Don’t open the door, I love you, Sorry”. He protected me from witnessing yet another horrific death of someone I loved. His last act directed at me was one of protection and love. Ultimately, that is the essence of what he left behind.
"I don’t yearn for accomplishments, professional or otherwise. I don’t think, “Oh, but I just want to write another book, meet more people, see more things.” What I want is time."
Resonating with this so, so much. Your words could be my words.
I wonder what I will leave behind and what meaning my kiddos will try to derive from it.
Good morning Suleika, as I sift through my emails I get excited to see you have written and your words are so thoughtful. You remind us today how important making time to stop, go inward and embrace our best selves , and open to the light of love and creativity. I am wrapping my arms around you beautiful… 💗💗💗
2 teenage boys and a sick 16 yr old dog. Many unspoken words left because she was not supposed to die.
She was supposed to get better. One year is all we had with her since her diagnosis. Now photographs that ring all the bells of the life she was ready to live going forward. A widow at 38, she was finally ready to move on after losing the love of her life.
Planning to travel, enjoying her work and confident enough about her boys to let herself dream.
As grandparents and custodians
we are privileged to have ther offspring living in our home as a reminder of her spirit and her sassy, quirky sense of humor. She lives on for us. The third teenager, the dog lasted only a week after she passed.
Dirty, mismatched socks. The bottoms are covered with animal hair. Small holes reveal themselves in the places where her toes and the balls of her feet press and wear on the knit. They stink, but only if you get up close and make an effort to smell them. They are white with dark red and lime green owls on the ankles, not warm socks to wear when it’s cold outside, but cheap, thin socks to wear when spring is coming and the temperatures are rising.
I find them in the den, living room, bathroom, dining room - there are more rooms likely to have them than not. Some are near her shoes, usually the ones she takes off immediately upon returning from home. Others make their way off of her feet while she is watching television, doing her homework, playing Roblox or just hanging out.
These socks are both irritating (Why, oh WHY, can’t she just pick them up and put them in the laundry basket?) and endearing (My girl’s feet are growing and she loves our animals and they love her). I vacillate between nagging her to pick them up and feeling resigned to the reality that she just can’t (or won’t) remember. I wonder if I have more important battles to pick, or if I need to win this one and move on to the larger ones later. I wonder if I should even be using battle metaphors when I speak of my daughter.
A train set. Glue still drying on the desk, unfinished pieces scattered around. I never understood how someone usually so gruff could create something so delicate, a little world tucked away in the corner of the basement. I realize now, after hearing more about your life from those who loved you most, that it was your way of escaping the life you were thrust into, of reclaiming a little of that creativity in the best way you knew how. As a child, I gazed at the minuscule details on billboards and rivers with wonder. Now, I wander through the dark room and feel your presence, even though you’ve left. Ever since I heard you passed, I’ve waited for this moment because I somehow knew this is where I would feel you most. I was right. I think about taking my embroidered conductor’s hat as a souvenir, but eventually realize that this is where I belong. I think about alike we were and how I wish I could have realized it sooner. I take one last look, one last breath, and close the door.
When you didn’t show up for work two weeks ago, they called us to check on you. You were alone, as you always were, in your townhome. Asleep, two months before your 75th birthday, inside a space that you hadn’t allowed anyone to enter for 12 years. When they carried your body from the space, it revealed the prism of your life. And the light of that morning revealed what had become of your home this last decade-- since you’d moved in, taken pictures of the neatly arranged furniture, and then promptly begun hoarding again. 12 bottles of Hidden Valley Ranch, 6 years of eggs, another paper bag (because hundreds weren’t enough). A bedroom with a hidden bed. Piles taller than me of online purchases never opened. But what remained that I won’t forget were the suitcases. Rows of them. Perhaps the only thing that brought you joy in this lonesome life was travel. And so when you come home, I suspect now… unzipping the 7th one… the pain of real, ordinary, everyday life was so great that you couldn’t bring yourself to unpack them. And so here they are still. All lined up. A mausoleum of your journeys. Each one a time capsule. It strikes me that, beyond the rodent-infested cordura, what I can see clearly now…is the inside of your mind. The unicursal labyrinth of your thoughts… remain. I see inside: a cordon-off room filled with moments that you didn’t have the tools to literally or figuratively unpack. There’s a great sadness in seeing someone wholly only when they’re gone. A tremendous guilt in parsing, dividing, selling and donating your things. And yet, I’m grateful to have seen you again—even all packed up, but now zipped wide open, in this way.
At the flat base of my extra computer monitor is a flat tray with a small collection of items. Among them is a tiny baseball card. It’s only slightly bigger than my thumb. My dad gave it to me a couple months ago.
“I found this in my desk. See if you can sell it online,” he said. “You can keep whatever you can get for it.”
“Thanks,” I replied, looking up at him as I sat at my desk.
His face had that look that all parents get when their kids are sick, except I am not a kid, I’m 34-years-old and I’ve been sick for 11 years.
He gently gave my shoulder a squeeze where he was resting his hand. The he turned and walked out of the room, shuffling his feet back into his office.
I looked down at the small card. “Lenny Dyskstra, Phillies Center Field,” it said on the bottom. At the top, the year, 1992.
When I got too sick to live alone, I moved back-in with my parents, except I didn’t call it that. “I’m staying with my parents for a while,” I’d tell people when I still had the bandwidth to apply my public relations degree to strategically communicate about my circumstances.
Initially I was able to do some freelance, then came long stretches of pain where it became impossible.
I went from being a fully-independent working woman to living with my parents and depending on them for everything.
Sometimes I sell items from my closet I no longer like on Poshmark and put the money into a special account just for me. It’s my spending money. My money. Something I did by myself. It’s weird how important that feels.
Dad gave me the card not because he thought I’d like it, but because he thought it may have retail value and that would lead to some spending money for me.
If I need anything, I know all I have to do is ask. They are able and I think enjoy taking care of me, but it still feels weird as an adult to ask your parents for a snickers bar at the airport newsstand.
It’s been a couple months since my Dad gave me the card. I haven’t looked into selling it. I suppose I like to look at it and remember they love to love me, no matter my age or physical ability. More importantly, it makes me feel seen, understood. I can only image how I’d feel if the tables were turned.
He kept a black leather jewelry box atop his tall walnut dresser, and when they divorced, my father took that box with him to a lonely apartment in Bayonne. The leather box has four small drawers, each lined with red velvet and notched in some sections for rings and tie tacks and such. The drawers are labeled with gold block lettering: keys, change, clips, stays. A men’s accessory box, a valet, smelling faintly like Polo cologne. At one time, it was filled with fine things, heavy gold chain bracelets and silvery cufflinks engraved with my mother’s initials. But valuables were sold for rent money or maybe to fund trips to Atlantic City. And when he died, he left the jewelry box on his dresser, filled with mostly worthless trinkets: cheap lady’s earrings forgotten by a girlfriend, keys that opened nothing, and 3 fake Rolex watches that I bet helped him imagine the feel of success. My father wanted to be cremated and we abided by his wishes, scattering his ashes from a boat in the Atlantic, not far from his beloved casinos. He did not want his body left behind, but he did leave his sad jewelry box and he bequeathed to me the enduring scent of his cologne.
I recently emptied the contents of the leather box and left it sitting tall on my son’s dresser. It’s a vintage jewelry box I tell him, and it was your grandfather’s. It’s there to hold some of the small things you love. Please take good care of it.
I have thought often of what I want to leave behind as I was turning 70 last month. I want to leave the legacy of love and warmth I hoped to communicate to my loved ones, students and people in need.. The most common objects left behind these days are masks, a symbol of our lives these past few years in this pandemic. I've seen them here in Florida, recently in Colorado in the great outdoors of beautiful trails, and the busy streets of New York City...I have been annoyed and often angry as I hate littering..Now, I consider the symbolism of wanting to throw them away..Maybe, they aren't people who normally litter, they just have the overwhelming desire to be free of the their suffocating presence. I don't want to consider people who have been brainwashed to believe masks themselves are a symbol of oppression, and litter to make that statement. I am glad being careful and embracing science kept me alive for my 70th birthday, and my resolve to share the best of whatever I have left on this earth.
A whimsical, stuffed red apple remains on the closet floor. Not something my mother would have taken on the weekend trip. Also, not something she would have intended to leave. Truly, not a thing with any intended purpose. Like so many things in the home - whimsy, out of use, out of date - but holding, teasing her with some tangible leader line to a pinprick of light in the depth of memory. A tiny scene that will otherwise never play out again, never surface for brief, sparkling, warming recollection.
My cat is set down in her closet, safe from the resident dogs. And this apple is right there, among the otherwise organized shoes, sweaters, scarves, and a stashed bottle of The Good Stuff. At first, I give it no mind. But each time I pass through, to see how the cat is faring, I see the apple, and I think more on that than the cat. What was a stuffed calico apple meant for, before? What size dog, what size cat?
I think my mother's answer is not about the why. Her answer, for so many beautiful silly useless things, is about the who, the where, the when. This apple is the doorknob, granting access to her collection of lives lived that threaten forgetting if we discard all of the things they left behind.
I look up to the paper quite infrequently these days while I’m lying in our bed. I can’t really say that you left it behind either. After all, you did not write it. You did not tape it to the ceiling. You did not really even follow the instructions… like… ever. You were only a shell of your whole (real) self at that point too. Why do I keep it taped there? The lines of the lined paper have faded with time and sun. My memories are fading with time and sun.
Maybe for me it is a reminder of how far you went. Your skeleton lying in that bed. Your body trying to abandon your soul, and starting to take your mind with it. You, Alex, staring at the ceiling, finding shapes -and friends- in the paint splotches. A squirrel (of course… though I still can’t find it). Your last PT exercises written down, I taped them on the ceiling for your entertainment. No. I taped them on the ceiling in the hopes that you would be inspired to perform. That your body would somehow find the strength to lift its knees and roll itself over if only you could read the instructions.
The shapes you could find in the letters. The amusement from reading a few words in a sentence with different inflections. Days of entertainment. Of course you could no longer make the movement of a straight leg raise, or do ‘disco with a band’ for some shoulder movement. But your imagination was still as wild as ever, and you could make stories from an X and the shapes in someone else’s handwriting.
How long should I leave it taped there on the ceiling above our bed?
My first thought was to write about a sweater of my dad's that I took from his dresser after he died. It is gray heathered wool, v-neck, and warmly baggy on me. I can still see him wearing it, and it makes me feel close to him when I do. But then I thought about all the little items I have from my daughter. She was a dreamy, creative, child happy with her own company and has grown into a spunky, creative woman who still marches to her own beat. My Maddie Collection includes a small stone she gave me to "remember a perfect day" by; it sits on my nightstand. I also have a small crinkled note asking, "want to pass notes?", which we then did. I also have a watercolor she made of herself with a love letter to me written on it. It hangs next to a drawing of me surrounded by my favorite things and words that describe me. Both were probably Mother's Day gifts. I have a faded pink-markered flower that I use as a bookmark. What do theses items say about my daughter? That she was and is a lover of the everyday and the ordinary. She gets excited to watch a favorite show, to knit, to plan dinner from her new vegan cookbook. She sends me pictures of her bunny sitting in the clean laundry, of her legs outstretched beneath a blanket , of herself reading a book in the sun. She is a poster child for rich living through simplicity. This is her nature, but it has been a convenient one for the last two years of pandemic life. And it is an orientation I have found comforting and affirming as I have slowed down my own hectic life these past few years. Talking to my daughter is like receiving a big YES to listening to my inner voice and embracing the undersung urges of my own heart. Yes to more reading, more thinking, more meandering. No to mindless activity, underwhelming relationships, the status quo. I'm very lucky.
My husband died of lung cancer one night in the winter of 2005. He bled out spontaneously after an uneventful evening with friends. His death was the swift and painless transition I had asked G-d to grant him, and me just a few months before, just after his diagnosis. I had ask that G-d grant him dignity in death; there were no witnesses to this horrific event - just me and our three Whippets, so his privacy was preserved. Fast forward, well not so fast, sometimes life felt like swimming in quicksand- but I digress- Later, in 2020 my fiancé killed himself in our home. He left a note scrawled in black marker on the outside of the locked bedroom door. Barely legible because of his drug and alcohol induced impairment I can conclude that he wrote this just before closing the door for the last time, locking it and lying down in bed to put a gun to his head and rush into the unknown. His note said “ Don’t open the door, call EMS, Don’t open the door, I love you, Sorry”. He protected me from witnessing yet another horrific death of someone I loved. His last act directed at me was one of protection and love. Ultimately, that is the essence of what he left behind.
"I don’t yearn for accomplishments, professional or otherwise. I don’t think, “Oh, but I just want to write another book, meet more people, see more things.” What I want is time."
Resonating with this so, so much. Your words could be my words.
I wonder what I will leave behind and what meaning my kiddos will try to derive from it.
Thank you for the beauty in this post.
Good morning Suleika, as I sift through my emails I get excited to see you have written and your words are so thoughtful. You remind us today how important making time to stop, go inward and embrace our best selves , and open to the light of love and creativity. I am wrapping my arms around you beautiful… 💗💗💗
2 teenage boys and a sick 16 yr old dog. Many unspoken words left because she was not supposed to die.
She was supposed to get better. One year is all we had with her since her diagnosis. Now photographs that ring all the bells of the life she was ready to live going forward. A widow at 38, she was finally ready to move on after losing the love of her life.
Planning to travel, enjoying her work and confident enough about her boys to let herself dream.
As grandparents and custodians
we are privileged to have ther offspring living in our home as a reminder of her spirit and her sassy, quirky sense of humor. She lives on for us. The third teenager, the dog lasted only a week after she passed.
Sent from my iPhone
Love and light, always.
A photo of my brother who died at 11 (I was three) sits on my desk.
And didn’t death
always crouch beside me at the dinner table while
Mother clanged pans, burned toast?
Is his ghost hovering just next to me or is he hiding
in the next room while I sip sour milk?
Mother yells at me, says to go outside and play, but
he lurks there too, near the front walk where he fell
from the chair and broke his arm, where they picked him up
and took him to the hospital, where he died at age eleven.
His portrait hangs on the wall above the dining room table,
his hazel eyes stare at my hazel eyes and follow me
from room to room, his face floating like a grey balloon.
What does it mean to die? I am three and no one tells me.
I want to sit next to him again, maybe let him
spread strawberry jam on my bread.
Dirty, mismatched socks. The bottoms are covered with animal hair. Small holes reveal themselves in the places where her toes and the balls of her feet press and wear on the knit. They stink, but only if you get up close and make an effort to smell them. They are white with dark red and lime green owls on the ankles, not warm socks to wear when it’s cold outside, but cheap, thin socks to wear when spring is coming and the temperatures are rising.
I find them in the den, living room, bathroom, dining room - there are more rooms likely to have them than not. Some are near her shoes, usually the ones she takes off immediately upon returning from home. Others make their way off of her feet while she is watching television, doing her homework, playing Roblox or just hanging out.
These socks are both irritating (Why, oh WHY, can’t she just pick them up and put them in the laundry basket?) and endearing (My girl’s feet are growing and she loves our animals and they love her). I vacillate between nagging her to pick them up and feeling resigned to the reality that she just can’t (or won’t) remember. I wonder if I have more important battles to pick, or if I need to win this one and move on to the larger ones later. I wonder if I should even be using battle metaphors when I speak of my daughter.
A train set. Glue still drying on the desk, unfinished pieces scattered around. I never understood how someone usually so gruff could create something so delicate, a little world tucked away in the corner of the basement. I realize now, after hearing more about your life from those who loved you most, that it was your way of escaping the life you were thrust into, of reclaiming a little of that creativity in the best way you knew how. As a child, I gazed at the minuscule details on billboards and rivers with wonder. Now, I wander through the dark room and feel your presence, even though you’ve left. Ever since I heard you passed, I’ve waited for this moment because I somehow knew this is where I would feel you most. I was right. I think about taking my embroidered conductor’s hat as a souvenir, but eventually realize that this is where I belong. I think about alike we were and how I wish I could have realized it sooner. I take one last look, one last breath, and close the door.
When you didn’t show up for work two weeks ago, they called us to check on you. You were alone, as you always were, in your townhome. Asleep, two months before your 75th birthday, inside a space that you hadn’t allowed anyone to enter for 12 years. When they carried your body from the space, it revealed the prism of your life. And the light of that morning revealed what had become of your home this last decade-- since you’d moved in, taken pictures of the neatly arranged furniture, and then promptly begun hoarding again. 12 bottles of Hidden Valley Ranch, 6 years of eggs, another paper bag (because hundreds weren’t enough). A bedroom with a hidden bed. Piles taller than me of online purchases never opened. But what remained that I won’t forget were the suitcases. Rows of them. Perhaps the only thing that brought you joy in this lonesome life was travel. And so when you come home, I suspect now… unzipping the 7th one… the pain of real, ordinary, everyday life was so great that you couldn’t bring yourself to unpack them. And so here they are still. All lined up. A mausoleum of your journeys. Each one a time capsule. It strikes me that, beyond the rodent-infested cordura, what I can see clearly now…is the inside of your mind. The unicursal labyrinth of your thoughts… remain. I see inside: a cordon-off room filled with moments that you didn’t have the tools to literally or figuratively unpack. There’s a great sadness in seeing someone wholly only when they’re gone. A tremendous guilt in parsing, dividing, selling and donating your things. And yet, I’m grateful to have seen you again—even all packed up, but now zipped wide open, in this way.
At the flat base of my extra computer monitor is a flat tray with a small collection of items. Among them is a tiny baseball card. It’s only slightly bigger than my thumb. My dad gave it to me a couple months ago.
“I found this in my desk. See if you can sell it online,” he said. “You can keep whatever you can get for it.”
“Thanks,” I replied, looking up at him as I sat at my desk.
His face had that look that all parents get when their kids are sick, except I am not a kid, I’m 34-years-old and I’ve been sick for 11 years.
He gently gave my shoulder a squeeze where he was resting his hand. The he turned and walked out of the room, shuffling his feet back into his office.
I looked down at the small card. “Lenny Dyskstra, Phillies Center Field,” it said on the bottom. At the top, the year, 1992.
When I got too sick to live alone, I moved back-in with my parents, except I didn’t call it that. “I’m staying with my parents for a while,” I’d tell people when I still had the bandwidth to apply my public relations degree to strategically communicate about my circumstances.
Initially I was able to do some freelance, then came long stretches of pain where it became impossible.
I went from being a fully-independent working woman to living with my parents and depending on them for everything.
Sometimes I sell items from my closet I no longer like on Poshmark and put the money into a special account just for me. It’s my spending money. My money. Something I did by myself. It’s weird how important that feels.
Dad gave me the card not because he thought I’d like it, but because he thought it may have retail value and that would lead to some spending money for me.
If I need anything, I know all I have to do is ask. They are able and I think enjoy taking care of me, but it still feels weird as an adult to ask your parents for a snickers bar at the airport newsstand.
It’s been a couple months since my Dad gave me the card. I haven’t looked into selling it. I suppose I like to look at it and remember they love to love me, no matter my age or physical ability. More importantly, it makes me feel seen, understood. I can only image how I’d feel if the tables were turned.
He kept a black leather jewelry box atop his tall walnut dresser, and when they divorced, my father took that box with him to a lonely apartment in Bayonne. The leather box has four small drawers, each lined with red velvet and notched in some sections for rings and tie tacks and such. The drawers are labeled with gold block lettering: keys, change, clips, stays. A men’s accessory box, a valet, smelling faintly like Polo cologne. At one time, it was filled with fine things, heavy gold chain bracelets and silvery cufflinks engraved with my mother’s initials. But valuables were sold for rent money or maybe to fund trips to Atlantic City. And when he died, he left the jewelry box on his dresser, filled with mostly worthless trinkets: cheap lady’s earrings forgotten by a girlfriend, keys that opened nothing, and 3 fake Rolex watches that I bet helped him imagine the feel of success. My father wanted to be cremated and we abided by his wishes, scattering his ashes from a boat in the Atlantic, not far from his beloved casinos. He did not want his body left behind, but he did leave his sad jewelry box and he bequeathed to me the enduring scent of his cologne.
I recently emptied the contents of the leather box and left it sitting tall on my son’s dresser. It’s a vintage jewelry box I tell him, and it was your grandfather’s. It’s there to hold some of the small things you love. Please take good care of it.
I have thought often of what I want to leave behind as I was turning 70 last month. I want to leave the legacy of love and warmth I hoped to communicate to my loved ones, students and people in need.. The most common objects left behind these days are masks, a symbol of our lives these past few years in this pandemic. I've seen them here in Florida, recently in Colorado in the great outdoors of beautiful trails, and the busy streets of New York City...I have been annoyed and often angry as I hate littering..Now, I consider the symbolism of wanting to throw them away..Maybe, they aren't people who normally litter, they just have the overwhelming desire to be free of the their suffocating presence. I don't want to consider people who have been brainwashed to believe masks themselves are a symbol of oppression, and litter to make that statement. I am glad being careful and embracing science kept me alive for my 70th birthday, and my resolve to share the best of whatever I have left on this earth.
I loved reading all of these. Thank you for trying my prompt.