"winter is coming" (chapter 7, "donald's aftershock"))a story out of minnesota))
The sun was sinking, and the moon was floating it seemed into the misty stillness of the clouds, trying to seep through with its laced light; in the zigzagged way; furthermore, the effects of the snow seemed crystal like, more beautiful than in any past observance. Donald drove home by a long detour, arriving back at his house by dusk, he had phoned his wife of the tragedy, as he called it.
When he arrived home, he went directly to the basement, explored a box, where he had put some of his things his mother gave him from childhood, and during his growing up stages. It was this he thought, these boxes of papers and trinkets, which made his life different—little things, as if she had been beside him at that very moment, and in essence, it was but a few hours ago.
He found many cards, Christmas cards signed by her each Christmas, also birthday cards, one after the other he picked them up, looked at them, felt them, read them: silver dust on some, some with faces, others religious; now that she was gone, they seemed more special, not regular. His youthful, strong hand picked up the postcards she wrote when she was on her trips. He swung the postcards back into the box, watched them fall flat on top of one another. He paused, appeared to have finished his search for whatever he was looking for, killing time, discontented about it all.
That evening, late evening, as he sat up with his wife over coffee, it occurred to Donald that it would be forever, somehow an unexplained reason, but a good time to hear his mind say it, he would never see her again, perhaps he was lightly hoping he could, would, but considering the fact, he knew the relationship once predestined, was over.
As Donald talked on, his wife, Ana interrupted, answered his loose talk with something friendly and perhaps unimportant, “It wouldn't do to get discontented about it she was an old woman, seventy-eight, or was it seventy-nine, we should see how much she left, sell her house and, take a vacation, it is long overdue. I mean, she'd not have us grieve on forever, and we got to bury her and so forth and on.”
Perhaps Ana was right, and she described it in a gregarious way, but she was of—or had I should say the temperament of a cat; agreed Donald looked at her strangely: these things had to be done of course.
