An Elderly Man Reclines

His wife dies. You have seen it all before, you can tell what will happen next. He will recline in the home that she has woven around him. He will let the ivy of their long years together coil around his somnambulant thoughts. The house grows imperceptivity into a mausoleum. Some warmth remains, within her carpet slippers and housecoats. He keeps them close. The cat will always be the shadow of her hand. He is a watcher, not at the funeral or the cemetery, but from the other side of a bed. He arranges ornaments, puts them back the way they were. Takes out fading photographs of them both on vacation, good times, also times when heartbreaking rocks had to be climbed. He places all those sepia moments into a shoe box she has provided, knowing he would need it.