"Rose-ann"

Rose-ann was in mourning.  The funeral was this afternoon, and she was unprepared for the grieve that flooded her stomach.  It had been churning and bubbling all night, and she woke up vomiting.  All things must die.  She knew this.  But she felt that she was barely out of mourning her parents death seven years ago, and now she had to deal with more death.  Things had gotten progressively more and more out of control when they died.  And now...more letting go.  Rose-ann didn't know if she would survive this funeral, this death.

Karen would be there at noon.  To begin the process.  Rose-ann wanted to bar the door.  Barracade herself in her house.  Shut out the world and it all seeing eye.  She felt that the mess that her life was in was on display, and she wasn't ready to bury that chaos that had become her world.  But Karen would be there at noon, and would not be put off.

Rose-ann sighed.  It was time to let go.

She continued to tape together the boxes that Karen had brought over from the U-Haul store. A stack of folding tables stood ready in her garage.  It would be the garage sale of the century!  Rose-ann was digging out from under her piles and piles of fabric, buttons, beads, lace, trims, and findings.  This was the last day of her hoarding of cloth.  Karen was on her way, and this was the day that Rose-ann and Karen would box up fabric , buttons, beads, lace, trims and findings for a massive yard sale.  Rose-ann had promised she would end her fabric addiction and her hoarding.  And, she had committed her home to a Book Woman Club meeting in August!

Rose-ann rose, pushing aside the cardboard boxes she had been assembling, to go over to a five foot tall pile of fabric in her living room.  Somewhere underneath was a couch she hadn't seen in at least five years!  She ran her hands along dusty cottons, and dug deep in the stacks to smooth out taffetas, brocades, velvets and woven tapestries.  Rose-ann just loved the touch of fabric; the feel of it's textures on her hand, on her face.  She lifted a piece of Kenti cloth and smelled it woven edges, remembering the smell of Africa that summer in Bonwire, the village where she had bought the woven length in. 

Suddenly, Rose-ann gathered a pile of cloth in her arms, her eyes wide and darting wildly from side to side!  Her heart began thudding in her throat, beating against her veins in her neck painfully, and Rose-ann's lips parted in loud panicked breaths!  Where could she hide this cloth, so Karen could not find it?  Where would it be safe from the up-coming purge?  Where?  Where?  Rose-ann began to run to the back of the house, and tripping, fell on her face in the back hall, knocking down huge piles and bins of fabric that reached from floor to ceiling!  She struggled to get out of the piles of cloth, gasping for air as bin after bin, pile after pile of fabric covered her!  She was drowning and she kicked her feet, flaying her arms out in wide arcs in an effort to tread above the depths of smothering fiber!  Rose-ann began to scream, to yell for help, but she was the only one in this house of madness.  She thought, if a pile of fabric falls in a hall and no one is there to hear it.....!  She fought her way out of the hall, swimming over, under, through layer after layer of cloth!  Finally, laying on wood, she drank deeply the dust and lent filled oxygen, gasping and coughing, crying and sobbing!  As the dust and lent settled, and her tears and panic dried on her cheeks, Rose-ann pulled herself up.

She slowly crawled to the living room, and pulled herself up on a chair, the only cleared space in the house, and reached for a flat square of cardboard.  She began to put together another box.  The funeral was to begin at noon.  Karen was coming, the only mourner besides herself that would attend this secret and priavate ending.  All things had to die.  And, Rose-ann knew her fabric addiction had lived out it's life expectancy!