Life goes on

On Saturday I made a trip to my favorite thrift store, looking for a table to create a small workspace for school, and any other good things I could find. I walked up to the table, which of course I found right away, because when I go searching at this particular store I always find what I want, that's why it is my favorite. I turned, in search of somone to mark the table as sold for me and out of the corner of my eye I saw my mother's head board. First I thought it must be an illusion, I stared accross the room, I knew before I reached it the sound it would make when I opened the cabinet, I knew before I opened the drawer the lining that would be inside. The tears flooded my eyes, that headboard was a part of my life from the time I was four until the night she died next to it. They wanted $150 for it, not an exorbant amount, but more than I should spend for sentimental value when the bedroom set I own is nicer, newer, and bigger. My brother, ever the voice of reason, says "That is not Mom's, it is like Mom's" I choose to believe he is wrong, it is not unheard of to find items from the past at the thrift store, just the other day a man found his mother's entire collection of LP's at the thrift store, identified them by her name and address labels that had been affixed 30 years earlier. He had not seen them in 20 years. He bought all of them, of course.
There is a book by Stephen King, entitled Needful Things, a story about a man who has a second hand shop in which each character finds something that he has long been searching for, the local goodwill is my Needful Things store, but I don't have to make a deal with the devil to retrieve my memories.
In the end I did not buy the headboard, it will go to someone else and become their memory, I bought two bicycles, one for myself and one for Sydney instead, ensuring both my mental health and physical health for the moment. As much as I miss my mother and regret all that was lost to me when she died suddenly, I realize that this is my life and it goes on the way I need it to, not by living in the past but learning from it.