Sell Everything.

He locked the door and put the key under the mat. The truck was running in the field and walking towards it he remembered her and her hair and how much he hated remembering.

The house sat quietly on the banks of a small creek that ran through Magnolia County in northern West Virginia. It has white washed walls and dark blue shutters and windowsills and handrails and pillars. The front porch ran from end to end and creaked when people were waiting to be greeted at the front screen door or when filled rocking chairs moved back and forth. The dark blue screen door stood before a very large,heavy, dark oak door that would sing when the wind blew in form the east. The house rested in front of the creek which was lined by large trees of various variety and width and height and in the evenings the trees would shield the house form the sun. The field that the house sat in was pure and unplowed and rested and capable. They could have planted, but they never did. They used it as a resting place on warm summer afternoons and a romping ground in the spring after swimming in the creek.

The house was theirs as a gift after they had wed the winter before. His parents owned it as a summer home and when they had died they left it to him. When they were married his parents had already been dead for three years, so it seemed fitting to revive the house once again. It seemed right to want to fill it with life and to graciously reintroduce warmth back to its walls. And for a time it was wonderful. For a time it was right and good and it worked. But then she got sick.

Four months after she died he and some family buried her in the south corner of the field near the creeks edge. He couldn't take staring at her grave anymore and decided it was time to go. He found that it was the proper time to leave this place and to go out and reach for new adventures and a new life. So he took the furniture and some things from the house and sold them in town. The house wives and plantation servants came and paid for everything and carried it all away on open bed wagons. Then he began letting family come and pick up the things that they wanted to keep. He didn't want any of it.

He only needed the memory of her in his mind and that was enough. The memory of her swinging back and forth on the rope swing in late April over the swelling creek. Wearing her cotton nightgown with her head flung back and her hair waving and flowing and sweeping in the air. That was how he wanted to remember her. That's how she wanted him to remember her.

So he took the next few weeks and cleared the house of everything and swept the floors and dusted away the few cobwebs that still remained in the corners. He sold the land and the house off to a man from the south that wanted a northern home for vacations. This suited him fine and the gentleman paid more than he was asking. So that next Sunday he packed his final bag and set it in his truck and then walked down to the creeks edge. He thought one more time about all the hours and heart and love and peace spent at that place and then left; locking the door behind him he placed the key under the mat and walked to the truck.

As he drove away from the house he wept for so many things. He cried for the house and for her and for the children that they never had. But most of all he cried for the fact that he was, once again, alone. So he locked and closed the gate behind him and then left the one that loved him as no other could.