Paper Butterflies

This weekend my husband, son and I continued our very determined mission to clean out our garage that had become really more an overstuffed storage unit than a usable space. It was the perfect weather for such a journey into the past, cool, overcast, so we had the door wide open, letting much needed fresh air mingle with the musty odour of boxes that held buried treasure going back more than 30 years. My husband and son found three boxes that turned out to be mine, stuffed to the brim with old letters and postcards, dating back to 1977... Forty years of memories about to have their slumber disturbed. It is always such a bittersweet experience to step into the time machine of our mind. You know it is going to hurt more often than not, and going to delight some too, but regardless of the mixed experience it will be emotionally, from super touching and sweet to sad and bitter, you step into that contraption that is the passage of time willingly, hypnotized by the delusional hope that maybe this time it will not make you sad.
I found tender, innocent letters form my two younger sisters, both of whom have been dead 19 and 12 years respectively. They only lived to be 35 and 44. I found touching, proud letters of my father, forever struggling with financial stress putting all four of us children through private colleges in the US. I found pictures of college friends, like my girlfriends from Puerto Rico, and I wondered how they were doing with the recent hurricane that tore through their island. I found a picture of a friend of mine from India, and then noticed finally today that  he had sent me a friend request last month. I found a few pictures of me as a baby with my parents. I found ticket stubs to museums and movies from the early 70's, and a receipt from Harrods in London, stamped July 6th, 1969, the day I bought my first mini - skirt. I found some touching cards from my friend Ellen, and I sent her a picture of a very sweet Valentine's card she sent me in 1978. I found, and in that finding, I felt like someone was stabbing me with a sharp knife. How can it be that almost 40 years have passed? How can the voices I hear coming from these letters and cards and pictures sound so fresh, so close , so real, while so much time has actually passed?
The hardest finds were the letters from my two younger sisters, letters from 1979, when they were 18 and 17, so full of hope, longing, first crushes and heart aches. The sorrow of the loss of my family came rushing into that garage like a flood water. I put all those precious memories, those fragile paper butterflies with broken wings, into a new smaller box and brought it into the house. I reread the letters today, and the letters from my father I put in my prose and poetry notebook. To the heart, those we loved always stay close by.
I had a beautiful family once. It was destroyed. Nothing but dust left. The letters and pictures and cards smell of dust and the implacable law of the passage of time. But, in my heart, those broken hearts and souls live on whole, along side the hope that somewhere, sometime we might meet again under more auspicious skies.