I’ve spent the last three days in a basement going through my parents things. By the end of the day yesterday, Ellen, Phillip and I had loaded one car with boxes to save and another car with boxes to discard. One car is bound for Virginia and Maryland, the other car for the county dump.

There’s a lot of Cassidy history in those two cars, and I’m bleary-eyed from going through it all. So many thoughts about the messiness of life and the tidiness of death. Thoughts amplified when Ellen and I drove to the cemetery late yesterday and I saw the clean sweep of grass and stone.

I dash off this post on a beautiful summer morning, window open to crescendo of cicadas and the low hum of a neighbor’s air-conditioning. My parents are gone, but we are still living. I could have called this post “The Cemetery.” But I called it “The Basement” instead.