Collecting Dust

He smiles at me from across the room. 

The light breaking through the blinds in the living room highlight the wrinkles on his face. I wonder what he’s thinking? What’s passing through his mind? Is he thinking about when the last time he went outside was, or when he’ll see his grandkids again? 

I stop staring and move to throw out the trash. His cheerful gaze never breaks even as the sliding door opens and the street behind us fills the room with morning traffic emulating the sounds of ocean waves during a storm. 

Outside, the air is chilly. Smells like mid march. 

It is rare to go outside and to actually feel the breeze grace your face. To feel it waltz with you and feel like a lover’s hand softly touching your cheek is blissful. The old Chevrolet sits near the garbage cans. The windows are completely up and the air inside is sealed off from the world for the past year. Those dust bunnies will never know what is changing the world. I almost feel sorry for them. Even with how dangerous it is to walk around in public without face protection, it is crazy to think there are organisms out there that aren’t affected by this pandemic. 

Inside, he hasn’t moved. Not. An. Inch. The only things that have made any sign of motion are the particles of dust around him. He is clean though, cleanest he has probably ever been.  The reason for him being clean is that he is a printed picture on a memorial candle. The picture of him is from just a few months before he died. My mother does her best to keep him clean and does so daily. He is placed on the mantle of our fireplace, just below the tv mounted above it. He is my grandfather and he lived a long life of fighting. He didn’t fight in wars overseas. No, he fought wars within himself, within his daily life. He was able to overcome just about everything that was thrown at him. He has survived knife wounds, fists to the temple, and cancer. The man was able to survive losing sixty pounds against his will and the most gruesome treatments of chemotherapy, but he couldn’t survive a virus. Plagued onto him by the carelessness of a family member. 

I still feel as bitter as I did almost a year ago when it felt like the whole world was coming to pieces. A year ago there was news about the virus but, everyone was still too busy with their lives to pay too much attention to it. We were told on the hour by the hour that it wasn’t even that bad. That it wouldn’t reach our shores. Is that not how it always happens with world changing incidents? It isn’t until it’s using dynamite to open your door that you understand the severity of it? 

A year ago, I was too locked into a work schedule that looking back now, was really unhealthy. Overextended six days a week for eight to nine hours a day. Barely eating, barely sleeping. I kind of miss it or do I miss everything that I anticipated after those shifts? The concerts where a sea of people feel as one. The late night dinner breakfasts with my girlfriend at the now closed diner down the street. Seeing their faces every day. Even the people I couldn’t stand, oh what I would give to have disagreements about how they lost plate number three for the party of twelve. 

Those are the days of a bygone era. Even though a majority of the population got the vaccine, it isn’t the same. I’m taking classes now and even then the “in class” meetings are not the same. There is more discomfort with being in a shopping plaza. Everywhere feels like a crowded elevator ready to drop a hundred floors due to over capacity. 

I stop daydreaming about the old days like an elderly man coming across a picture of friends now long gone. Only, I am that old man. Instead, it is my grandfather. Instead of it being a knife, or cancer, or old age it’s this damn virus that got the best of him. All those years of surviving, only to meet your end with a ventilator and not even being conscious for it. I refuse to believe he ever planned to get to that point. 

As furious as I am, it’s hard not to smile when coming face to face with how happy he looks on that damn candle. If I could I would build a time machine to warn him about all of this. To have my cousins heed my warning that it won’t be them that gets the virus, it won’t be us. It will only be him. 

Something else on the mantle gets caught by the sunlight. It's a key and not just any key but the key to the Chevrolet.

The least I could do for him is clean up that decaying beauty outside. The rain we have been getting showered with lately has kept the outside clean, but the inside still rots like Dorian Gray. Yeah, that’s what I will do. 

I head into the garage and get leather polish and a duster. I tug behind me the vacuum cleaner that dad brought from his job. This thing can out suck a black hole any day. It’s going to cost me a few class sessions but it will be worth missing a lecture or two. 

The Chevrolet deluxe is waiting for me. Its saddened interior is anticipating my duster. Its carpet is dying for cleanliness. 

I open the driver side door and I am weak. 

His scent comes pouring out of the car. I can’t hold it in. The tears come flushing out as the memories of him come flooding in. I fall to my knees. I feel the concrete tearing into my flesh. Just a scrape but enough to send a numbing sensation. I want to just stay here on the floor but something reflects the daylight. 

It is a crinkled up picture of me and my grandfather placed in the corner of the dashboard covering the speedometer. I laugh to myself, he did like to live dangerously.