Childhood Burning

The paper was older than it had any right to be. Thin as dried petals, warped by decades of attic heat and forgotten seasons. Fingerprints still pressed into wax crayons. Names misspelled in big, proud letters. Scribbled suns. Dragons without symmetry. Portraits of my parents with triangle bodies and too many teeth.

Always smiling. Always there.

I found them after the funeral, tucked in a dusty box beneath the flotsam of our family's life. Over one hundred pieces—drawings, cards, folded construction paper messages—all made for them. All kept. All carried through all the years.

My first attempts to say, "I appreciate you both. I love you so much."

And it was too much.

Not in a dramatic sense. Not in a wailing-on-the-floor, lifetime-movie way. Just too much. Like standing in a house that still smells like your mother's hand lotion, or hearing your father's voice in an answering machine message you forgot you saved.

It doesn't crush you. It undoes you.

So I took pictures of the best ones. I whispered thanks. And I brought them outside.

On the deck, with the scent of a waxy red candle and a quiet prayer, I fed them into the flames. One by one. Like an offering. A ceremony. Like I was returning them to the people I had made them for.

Paper curling into smoke. An entire childhood evaporating into the late afternoon.

No one tells you how much of grief is choosing what stays and what you let go.

I didn't want them boxed and forgotten again. I didn't want them in a plastic bin shoved into the back of a closet like memories on life support. I wanted them to matter, and somehow burning them did.

Letting go was the most loving thing I could think of doing.

I watched each drawing vanish into ash—not as destruction, but as delivery.

I imagined them catching the updraft, swirling past our old roofline, past telephone wires into the still air of a Kentucky dusk.

And when all that remained was dust and quiet, I scooped what I could into a tin. I walked it to their graves like a final gift.

And I said, "Here, I made this for you."

This has been a love letter to a forgotten thing and to the small child inside us, still trying to draw love big enough to be seen from heaven.