The time has arrived to honor the spirits. I don’t know if I believe in an afterlife exactly. Whatever there is remains a mystery. But the living I believe in, and we do what we must to remember, to grieve, to travel through our days with love forever in our luggage. For sure, there’s the emotional baggage people lament and joke about, but traumatic emotions aren’t the only emotions in there. My father may be gone, but my love for him remains.

And I think it does us good to open the suitcase from time to time and hold it close, show it to others, perhaps, and take pleasure in it again. So, I’m still traveling through this particular plane of existence, and I’m sitting down on a bench with my cases and handbags. I’m opening up this particular suitcase that not everyone notices but that is heavier than it looks (and getting heavier every year), and I’m snapping open the locks of well-worn silver (of course), and I’m letting the autumn sunlight shine upon the contents. The contents whisper, “Hello, again. We’re still here. Thanks for carrying us.”

Here are the contents.