me.
It was what was on the chair beside the bed.
A shoebox.
Brown card, soft at the corners, mended along one edge with tape that had gone the colour of tea.
And on the lid, in black marker, in my handwriting, aged eighteen:
***GIL — BOOTS — 9***
I bought him those boots for Christmas in 1983 with money from a Saturday job at the bakery. I wrote that on the lid myself so he would not shake it.
That box has been through four houses, three states and forty-one years, and it was sitting on a plastic chair in a hospital in Rowe’s Mill with a ring box on top of it.
What was in it.
Forty-one birthday cards.
Addressed. Stamped. Never posted.
One for every year from 1985 to this one, in order, oldest at the bottom, each one with the year written in the corner in pencil.
The
