It took me until spring to enter Grandpa’s bedroom with the intention of changing anything.

I began with his clothes.

I sorted them slowly, keeping a few shirts and folding the others for donation.

I found birthday cards, receipts, a watch he’d stopped wearing when the strap broke, and a photograph of Grandma tucked into a book.

Behind his bedside table was a shoebox filled with drawings I’d made as a child.

There was a lopsided house with smoke curling from its chimney.

A picture of a garden full of flowers taller than the people standing beside them.