After Loss--Uncovering the Missing

Six weeks after the fire, I am trying to give myself breaks from obsessing about the claim, layers of grief, and the perpetual onslaught of anger that keep returning. Donna and I walk the galleries of the Baltimore Museum of Art while the sky darkens into a violent thunderstorm. We are looking for hands and clothing detail without deciding to focus on such minutia. 
I am fine through the Epstein gallery of heavy, old works and nod to Jacob as we leave in gratitude that he wanted to collect and then leave it all to Baltimore. 
There's a new showcase for Duane Ellis who boldly extrapolates on his process through photographs, sketches, and bright paint. The truth is there in his mother's bedroom that serves as focal point for one whole wall. Perhaps that is why the mind goes to the bedroom and then back there in the closet. 
We move on to Matisse and Gauguin as we approach the Cone sister's apartment. It is one of my favorite exhibits in this rarified place. Etta and Claribel's furniture, their paintings, etchings, collections, and taste 
inhabit one wall. Two couches invite visitors to sit and meditate on the arrangement, the audacity of two women who dared to choose Matisse, enjoyed the repartee of Gertrude Stein and other in an intellectual heyday that will never be replayed. 
The collector has an intimate relationship with the artist. The collector desires to own the product and in that way, a part of the artist. The artist feels the support but also the weight of the collector's need. ​

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On another wall is a curious white dresser with drawers that beg opening. I've gazed at them before, so as Donna soundlessly slid them open, I stood back watching.

Perhaps it was the distant perspective, perhaps it was the lumpy amber beads, but the loss of the house and all its minutia lodged in my throat. Where is my odd collection of old beads? Where are those cool jet beads, the ribbons of amethyst flanked by black glass in an old barrette, the pins of concentric, cut obsidian, and the Mass card from Mrs. Pencil who started my collection of mourning jewelry?
She left the world with no one to gather up her bits and pieces but a thirteen-year-old at an estate auction with her grandfather and dad. One cigar box of trinkets started me on a twenty-year hobby that I've abandoned for another twenty. 
​And now there is no box to open and uncover a passion, banked like embers, for someone else to open and touch and wonder.
Loss is all that's left of the wreck left of that other life before the fire, but it hurts all the same.