The things you left behind...

Do you ever wonder what possessions of yours people will want once you've died?

I don't mean the big things - house, car, property, expensive jewelry, the things you leave in a will. I don't even mean the smaller things that people will tell you they would like you to leave to them when you pass on - dishes, rings, a well made coat.

I mean the little things, silly objects, things you'd never think to mention in a legal document, or even think to ask for, things that only have value because they have value to someone....things with significance you never would have imagined, they were just the things you used or owned...things of yours that even they didn't know they wanted until they became the things you left behind...

What objects that I care about now, or even don't care about now, will have even lasted that long? Will I move and lose some of it? Will I split from a lover who throws some of my belongings out in spite, or keeps them as a painful reminder of mistakes not to make again? Will some of them burn in a fire?

What silly trinket of mine is going to mean something to someone when I'm gone?

Will I own a silly, crumbling straw hat that my one grandchild wants because she remembers me wearing it to her birthday?

My dancing shoes...will they look much the same as they do now - unscuffed and shiny, still with the awkward stiffness of trying to learn something new? Or will they be battered and relaxed, almost worn through with use? Will they have been worn to disintegration and replaced once? Twice? Three times? Will you be able to see the unique shape of my foot in the sole? Will I have danced for years?
...Do I get any good?

What photos will hang on the wall and lean on shelves? Do I ever even get around to printing any? Are their frames covered in dust or clean and new? Have they hung on the wall so long that the paint has been bleached around them by years of sunshine through the window?

Will the scarf I just bought new today, the narrow, sheer, white one with the yellow polka dots, be someday held to someone's tear-stained face? Will the faint smell of my perfume on the fragile cloth be breathed in by my grieving spouse? My daughter? Son?

Will there even be anyone?

Maybe there will be no one. What if there's no one left? Maybe my property will be sifted through by a kindly next door neighbour, who never knew me in my early years, never knew my whole story but was the closest thing the police could find to the next of kin. Will I have had to watch every one I love leave before me? Will I be all that's left?

Will people know right away when I'm gone? Will my loss be felt instantly, intensely? Or will it take time for someone to even notice? Will I fade quietly away...slip away unnoticed through the back?