The tackle box...

It's been in my basement since we moved here. In the same spot. Dust collecting indubitably, slowly decaying as it has not been disturbed in such a long time.

It was his.

The intention is to pass it on to our son, at this time much too dangerous, what with the hooks and matches and other things I had planned to remove as they were not appropriate for a boy of a such a young age.

But I didn't.

I couldn't.

The pack of matches, half extinguished. The prescription pill bottle filled with fish hooks of various sizes. The gadget that has many uses, opened so the knife is ready, most likely to cut up fish, but I will never know.

Everything has its place, and it was never mine to tell exactly what place it belonged. It was his.

Of everything we kept, this always comes to mind as being the most valued, because it is him.

The fishing gadgets.
lures.
bells.
hooks.

He chose all of those himself. He chose them and he decided to put them in this little box. He knew where they belonged, had a place for everything.

Even the smell of the old box never went away. Smoke and dirty fishing lures fills this box. It never fades. Am I ever glad I never had the urge to disinfect this stuff because I would lose another piece of him.

I can open this box anytime and think of him.

Even the reel. That reel that lit up his face like a kid on Christmas. The one that he claimed reminded him of his father's reel because of the clicking sound it made when you wound it in. That sound was his way of coping sometimes, I could tell.

The same reel that I tangled the line on recently. That's how we were, I broke things, he fixed them, and it worked splendidly.

That reel is beside the tackle box. Waiting. When he's ready it will be his.

I just hope that he can appreciate this as much as I do.