Reliquary of Scraps

It is a slow blurring wrapping up a lifetime.  Lunches, last looks into student’s eyes, kind notes, hearty words, dinners, last grades turned in today, and the long walk aways keeps getting longer.  What has surprised me is how much must be done, put away, cataloged, packed, signed off, signed up, and what to do with this and that and this again.  So much routine is now changed to ending 32 years of routine. It is hard to end a 32-year routine, like digging up an old oak tree, doing a 10,000-piece white puzzle, scraps.  That’s the problem, so many scraps, of life, real life, laying around in the back of drawers, file cabinets, on the top shelf, corner of the closet, and odd-shaped unmarked boxes.  Stored scraps of my living. 32 years of collected relics.  One puts relics in reliquaries, and as I have held every scrap, every small bit I felt worthy of saving over these 32 years, I have felt myself the reliquary of a life, a polishing if you will, of a life I never earned nor imagined, a gift from the Grand Gift Giver.