In those first days after your death,
when I couldn’t cry,
there was nothing sadder than things you left behind.

Nothing sadder than the two tea bags of your favorite tea
that I found in a shoe box you carried from home to the office and back,
so much hope embodied in those tea bags – the anticipation
of having a moment between patients to steep a bag in a mug of hot water,
then to take a sip, and pause, and think, and take another sip.
I looked at those little paper bags of tea that your fingers touched,
and imagined you opening the pantry, selecting the tea, placing the bags delicately in the shoe
box, and tenderly carrying the box downstairs to the basement office where you saw patients on
the weekend, caring for their wounds and pains, listening to their stories,
and I felt the great distance between the promise embodied in those tiny bags of tea, and how
they were now left waiting in that sterile box,
all that promise of warmth and comfort gone.
They looked so desolate, so forlorn.

And there was nothing sadder than the two Hallmark birthday cards that I found in a drawer of
Mom’s wooden bureau,
two crisp un-opened birthday cards in a flat brown store bag,
one for L’s 40^th, and one for your 70^th, your birthdays only two days apart,
and how I imagined Mom’s hopeful act – driving to the store, selecting just the right card for you
and for L, her thinking briefly about the smile the cards would bring, then placing them inside
her desk, waiting for the arrival of the birthdays, and now those cards forever abandoned—
it’s that unbreachable distance between her hope and the emptiness of the blank cards—

And there was nothing sadder than the bag of heavy cotton socks that you must have ordered to
keep your feet warm in the middle of winter, that arrived in a package three days after your
funeral: after I opened the package I imagined you looking at the catalogue and patiently
selecting the socks you wanted, splurging a little, fantasizing about how warm your feet would
be in them, and I had to call the sock company to explain that you had died, that the socks were
no longer useful—thick socks in the neutral, comforting colors of oatmeal, grey and taupe,
and that I would send them back as soon as I could
so that they could warm someone else’s feet.

– Laura Hodes Zacks