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What to do

 I have been thinking about what to do with the toxic pieces of your family history:

The bank letter of credit issued to the cotton merchant.

The portrait of a man and wife who were on the wrong side of a war, 

not the losing side 

the wrong side.

The letter crafted to convey the most pain in perfect rolling script.


The hurt feelings that have no physical form but are 

solid all the same; 

weight that you carry.

The heroic stories you believed when you were small

But now you realize they have no heroes in them

You can burn them, 

store them in the attic, 

put them in a box you give to your cousins at Christmas, 

fling them without ceremony in a dumpster on the other side of town and drive away quickly, 

keep them wrapped in archival tissue paper and take them out to show at family gatherings. 


If anyone objects you can say that things were different then. 

Offer no further explanation.

You can weaponize them:

use them to fuel 

your pride, 

your despair, 

your righteous indignation


until you are consumed.

You can run them through a shredder, mix them with water and concrete and build a fire pit out of them, letting them carry smoke up to the sky on fine summer evenings. You can bury them in the deepest hole you can dig.

Cover them with leaves and mulch

Plant flowers over them

Take it as a sign when the flowers bloom,

or die.

But what you cannot do is get rid of them.

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