I took a post I’d been working on for almost three months and simplified it. It took up so much space and wore me out. It’s here, rough and definitely unfinished. Put it together, since I can’t seem to; however you think works best. As you’ll soon read, it’s about what we keep: stored memories, held energy, and things we don’t let go of, both invisible and physical. Maybe that sentence is the clearest encapsulation of what I’m really trying to express. But let’s continue…

The box sat in my closet. It has been there since April 2016.

I was surprised to find the unopened bill from my long hospital stay in Chicago. With all the other mail, coming home, and the big changes in my life, I didn’t want to deal with another medical bill. So I tossed it into the box with the rest of the papers. Even so, I was surprised to find it at the bottom, the envelope worn and faded.

During my first round of treatment, around June 2016, I went to the local UPS store and made copy after copy of documents. Even though it was urgent, I still had to explain why I was in the hospital in Chicago. I was sick from chemo, swollen and cranky from steroids, but I gathered and stapled everything I thought might help. My backup plan was to overwhelm them with paperwork. If they denied my claim, I would send even more documents. If they refused that claim, I’d keep sending them more papers. So I stood before the printer as it spit out sheet after sheet, hoping for two things: given my situation, not that they’d approve my claim, but that the edible didn’t kick in until I got home and that I didn’t throw up all over the copier. I never thought they’d happen at the same time; what a nightmare.

But this isn’t really a post about insurance. It’s about what’s inside a dust-covered box and fire’s healing power.

I believe in gravity. I accept it. I don’t really understand how gravity and time work together, and I’m not sure I ever will. The small elephant figurine, which fit in my palm and could have been a paperweight, fell from my hand. It was strange to watch it fall. It drifted down slowly, and the moment seemed to last forever. This box, hidden in my closet, has held so much for a decade, maybe too much. The elephant seemed to fall for hours. It made me stop and realize where I was and where I had been. I was holding on to all these scraps: pages of medicine information, chemotherapy schedules, treatment plans, drug details, claims, refilings, denials, and finally the little things, keepsakes, including the glass elephant. When it finally landed, the elephant’s trunk and two front legs broke. I stood there, carrying both longing and relief. They were clean breaks. The glass was so thick that it didn’t shatter. I could have easily glued it back together, but something about it, both the accident and the outcome, though I’m not sure what, felt irreversibly transformed.

What followed was a sudden rush and a strange mix of need and longing. The moment the elephant broke apart, I set out to complete a task. With its break came a bright, clear understanding. I knew I had to act before I gathered the pieces, both of the elephant and of myself as I slowly disintegrated, and, by doing so, stop the task I had planned: I was going to burn it all.

I kept a few postcards and letters from the box, along with trinkets, small keepsakes, and handmade items sent to me during treatment. These, though deeply important, ended up in the box and, like the bills and other papers, I couldn’t bear to look at them—the bills and such, for obvious reasons. The handmade items, postcards, trinkets, and so on, because they broke my heart; they pulled at me, tore at me. Some of these items came from fellow cancer fighters, people I had met along the way, and who have since passed away. Others are from those still in the fight, still in the thick of it, forever going through treatment, the mad dance, the purest of us all, living like sages from moment to moment, whether in pure anger or blissful joy, until their bodies fade away. Some items are from friends who, for one reason or another, left my life. They didn’t pass from cancer, but their departures left a hollowness nonetheless.

The box was surprisingly heavy. I coaxed a small pile of brush and leaves into flame and pulled out a few dozen pages. I watched the text smolder from underneath, then burst into a mini explosion, an epic tangent of fists, desirous of oxygen. I repeated this again and again. Then I set the box directly on top of the raging fire. It, too, paused for a moment, as if holding back, pacing, edging closer and closer before erupting.

Our firepit is perfect for this sort of ritualistic event; it is lined with stones and tucked away from the world in our backyard.

I could be anything at that moment.
I could be anyone in that place, there within the stillness, in the darkness that was broken randomly by the flash of flames.