NOT JUST COMIC BOOKS

There are times when a book lands in your lap and as you start to read it, a sentence or a theme reminds you of a memory. The Lost Letter by Jillian Canton brought me to only page five when her recollection of her father’s love for collecting stamps reminded me of a long rectangular box about three feet long and about eighteen inches tall residing in my third floor closet. A box I had never opened since it was delivered to me in December of 1995. Not even two months since my brother had died from a year long battle with adeno carcinoma of the lung at the too young age of 25.

I remember being in my mother’s basement after he died. We were going through some of my brother’s things that had found their way as storage there typical of a twenty something trying to figure out his life.

“Do you want Michael’s comic book collection? She asked.

There seems to be two distinct ways a parent handles the intense pain of losing a child. Hanging on for dear life to everything and anything is one way, or purge all physical items that are distinct reminders of pain. My mother had chosen the latter and I was the lucky recipient of whatever I desired of my deceased brother’s.

There was a part of me that wanted to hang on to every item possible so that he would not be physically forgotten so I accepted the box and promptly placed it in my basement of the house I shared with my former husband. Four months later I found myself pregnant and the box became a temporary forgotten shadow of my brother as we made our way as new and busy…