We had a recent storm that devastated the area.

I’m cleaning up now. Picking up fallen limbs and setting things back where they belong.

Things will go on the burn pile.

The work is both symbolic and cathartic.

Death is a funny thing.

Not funny as in humorous, although it can be, given enough time and space.

But it’s *funny* as in *strange*.

Many things can die.

A plant can die. A relationship can die. A person can die.

I think the most painful of deaths is the death of a dream. Not a dream like one has when one is asleep, but the dream of hope and potental actions that *could* have happened, had death not come knocking at the door in an unexpected way.

I’ve lived alongside death a number of times, as many of us have.  I’ve managed the aftermath a few times.

Well, maybe “aftermath” is too strong a word. Perhaps, “restoration” is a better one.

Thankfully I’ve not yet managed the catastrophic death that some must work through. Yet. That day may come. Or it may never come for me. One day at a time it is, then.

Still, those moments come my way.  I see the item set down by the person who will never come back to pick up that item again.  It’s at those times that I’m at a loss.

Someone must pick that thing up to put it where it belongs. On a shelf of memories alongside other things others have left me to pick up. Tucked away in a box with other items too painful to be gazed upon

Or, for most things, picked up to be put in the hands of others to use. Or thrown in the bin to be discarded with other items that hold no value.

It is poetic, and sad, in a way, the things death leaves for us who live to sort through.

Death is funny that way.