To Whom it May Concern:
I know you might be finding me one day, alone and deceased in this Apt 19D so I wanted to explain a few things…..
I’ve lived here for so long, I don’t even remember how it got to this state of disarray.
When I first moved in, it was totally empty and filled with possibilities.
I really tried to keep up with housekeeping but as you can see, did not do well with that.
I have a hard time throwing anything away. What if I need a box that size to store something in the future -or if I need to send a package to someone? So I just stacked everything up in piles.
The piles look neat to me - and I know where everything is - but to someone from the outside it just looks like a mess.
This is why I never invited anyone over for dinner or just to hang out - I mean years ago when I was more social.
I was embarrassed to have anyone else see it.
But I know that some day I will be gone, and none of this stuff will matter.
Not the newspapers, the magazines, the boxes, the empty coffee cans, the souvenirs from Coney Island, the mug with the broken handle, the calendars that I couldn’t bear to part with because what if I needed to remember when my last dentist appointment was?
I never really got the knack of digital calendars so I just kept with the regular ones.
I did get used to online shopping but that just caused more problems. When the packages came and the product wasn’t what I expected, I never returned it I just saved it in the pile thinking well maybe one day I would find use for it.
Probably I inherited these traits from my parents because they were very nostalgic about things and kept every letter they ever received, every greeting card, every gift they gave each other too.
I was watching a show about some Royal funeral procession and everything was so ornate and there were thousands of people attending the funeral in a huge church.
It got me thinking about when I go - say I die alone in this apartment….. Who will miss me? How long will it be before someone finds me? At that point it won’t matter to me because I’ll be gone.
As they look through the apartment they will find all the material items, but won’t know what each of them meant to me at some point in my life - what sentimental value they have.
One thing I do hope is that maybe the pigeons who always fly around outside my window will know when I pass…. And they will gather on the windowsill one time in a solemn memorial to me. Then they will fly away and look for another apartment windowsill where someone leaves the stale bread for them, and maybe become a friend to someone lonely.
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