Cluster Tomatoes

There is tragedy and there is sadness. Aged Parent's death falls in the sadness category: she lived a long life, died at home with music and flowers and a minimum of pain — not a Greek tragedy. It is interesting how the sadness manifests. The disappearance of a human being throws into relief the little prosaic things that make up us all. Yes, there is also residue of the larger aspects of existence, of course, but for me the details are the foundation. 
So the things I encounter in my walks through the house are either no longer here because she no longer is, such as:

• the San Francisco Chronicle -- was she one of the last 27 people in the city who actually had home delivery of the newspaper?
• the thumping noise of her cane -- a slow thump/shuffle, thump/shuffle
• the top volume of Oprah, The View, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune (actually, not a lot of sadness around the absence of those...)
• squirreled-away bags of mini Hershey chocolates
• cluster tomatoes

Or there are the things that still are here and are equally sad-making, such as:

• endless stashes of plastic bags, paper bags, pieces of aluminum foil

• silly cat cartoons stuck with magnets on the ancient beached whale of a refrigerator
• quite old faded drawings by a grandchild she quarreled with quite a lot
• books she loved a long time ago and which I loved too
• baked beans

She also loved fabric, good fabric with color and texture, so I've kept about six pair of her best wool trousers out of the donation boxes. I will make some pillows with those beautiful plaids and herringbones. She'd like that. She did teach me a lot about fabric and yarn. It's nice to have something aesthetic as one of her legacies.