My father has a small box in his dresser drawer. Most people have a box like it – filled with odds and ends of life – momentos not bold enough to display, yet holding moments of who they were and have become. My father has been dead for fourteen years, yet we haven’t moved his memories.
I sit upon the bed and wonder. Who would understand the significance of a child’s toy decoder? Of a black and white photo of men in uniform unknown to us? As a curious little child, I looked though my dad’s box many times, held the sergeant’s stripes and the rifleman’s badge, yet have no idea if they were even his.
And today, what do I know of who he was? Here is a geode, an ancient piece of quartz that a boy carried home from a creek bed sixty years ago. Why? Why of all the things to save, did he save this?
The thread of connection is severed, and all that holds these memories in place are the thin walls of a shoebox. Such thin walls separate us from the unknown.
What made my father who he was and where has he gone?
Hui Neng said, “Show me your original face before you were born,” and a famous koan was born. Who needs Zen masters to ask the obvious? The koan of life and death, being and non-being, presents itself to you constantly.
You are a box containing a collection of moments. Such thin walls separate you from the unknown. What will you be when you are no more?