It was just a box

It was just a box.

She noticed it unexpectedly out of the corner of her eye as she was gazing out the window while drying dishes. It jumped out at her the way a spider on the wall suddenly startles you.

She loved getting packages. She hadn’t placed any Amazon orders lately though. Her heart quickened at the thought of what it could be, who it could be from.

Normally she’d be excited for a brown box on her porch. But something was unusual about this one. Firstly, it was placed delicately on the chair under the porch, rather than thrown at the doorstep as usual. Secondly, she wasn’t expecting a package.

The brown box was marked FRAGILE in big, bold letters. It had small splatters of rain that looked like escaped teardrops. It hadn’t rained this much, this hard for years. Her soul felt as parched as the earth. She welcomed the coziness of the summer rain. It felt good and right to be inside for once, rather than being corralled into her former refuge by frigid winter temperatures and government orders to hide from an invisible virus. She was just trying to survive heartbreak, let alone a pandemic.

The box was quite heavy. It was indeed addressed to her, so there was no mistake that it had ended up on her porch after all.

She opened it gingerly, carefully.

There was almost something ominous and unwelcome about the package, despite the fact that it had been carefully and beautifully wrapped in brown paper like an old-fashioned parcel. It was just a feeling she had, the same one she got when she knew something was off with her now ex-fiancé. At first his sudden and inexplicable coldness was barely perceptible. She chalked it up to a bad day at work. But then when “amore” disappeared from the end of the phrase “good night,” she knew that was the beginning of the unraveling. Like when you innocently tug on a stray thread and the entire seam unravels. You can’t even pinpoint the exact cause of it all, the moment that it started. And nothing can be done to stop it because the momentum is already there, taking out each and every carefully knitted stitch.

Inside was the most beautiful, ornate floral bone China that she had ever seen. She had never owned anything so fancy. One dozen vintage Aynsley tea cups and saucers, made in England.

From his grandma Ruth, the card stated. “Please accept this family heirloom for your wedding. You are part of the family now.” Nobody had told grandma Ruth the news. Nobody had wanted to upset grandma more than 2020 already had. With her dementia, she had a hard time remembering why she had no visitors. She was still living in the pandemic “before times." She asked about the wedding every time we had called, sometimes forgetting that it had been called off due to Covid restrictions. Nobody had the heart to tell her that the wedding had been called off for good now. She wouldn’t remember anyways, better let grandma live the rest of her days in peace. Why upset her more than need be? She had been so excited to finally have a granddaughter in a family full of boys.

She inspected the tea cup, admiring its beauty, in awe of the intricacy that inspired her the way their relationship had. The beautiful connection that HE had broken. It wasn’t another girl who had taken her place. (Or was it? She could never be too sure anymore).

It was the alcohol (as far as she knew). She was replaced by alcohol. She was willing to see him through this rough patch. For better or for worse. Although they hadn’t officially said it, she still meant it. She had always meant it. They would overcome this addiction together. Even though he had become sullen, she knew the joyful man who made her laugh still existed in there somewhere, and she would find him again. But then came the dreaded “talk” in which her fears and suspicions were realized.

“We want different things,” he said. They had talked constantly about growing old together, their future home & family. When and where did they start to disagree on that?

If he wanted the life of an alcoholic over her, then sure, she could agree they wanted different things. She had been too stunned, too saturated in grief to react then.

Holding the beautiful teacup, she felt the rage of a thousand cuts to her heart. She let out a primal, animalistic scream, the kind when one’s very survival is threatened. She lost her grip on the teacup and it shattered into a million pieces like her heart.

Her anger was a small glimmer of life, the will to survive still within her, lifting the heavy veil of grief she had worn for months. The outburst of anger had been incited by him, but only she was responsible for picking up the pieces.

She grabbed a pen and a card and began writing.

“Thank you grandma Ruth…” she started. Shame ran down her face in streams of black mascara. Her destructive relex had broken an heirloom, sent in love. She couldn’t even make love last. Had everything been her fault after all?

She had opened Pandora’s box of all that had been trapped inside her: grief, despair, shame, and rage.

Those were all her own though. After all, it was just a box.