Goodbye

I give to you a true story in eleventy-one words...

I sift through the last container determining if I want any of the detritus therein. The garage door opens with its familiar hemming and hawing. My mother enters, reminds me that the train is at six. I survey the unfinished basement with its myriad accumulated memories. Something nags me then, a sense of finality wrapped in haste. I ascend the stairs and find my grandparents reclining in the den. I shake my grandfather’s hand, kiss my grandmother’s cheek, and dart back down the stairs. As we depart, I glance at the dogwood, the row of unkempt hedges, this house I’ve known since birth. And I realize it’s time to say goodbye.