Today - I threw out my Dad's butter.

It wasn't much - maybe 1 1/2 TBSP of it - in the pressed glass butter keeper which had been in the family for a very long time.  I'd moved it to my refrigerator after he'd passed, while I was going through what was left in there in hopes of donating to the local food bank anything they might use or want.  That was ... wow... now just shy of a year and a half ago. 

I didn't intend to keep it this long - in fact, it took up residence comfortably at the back of the middle shelf in the 'fridge -  where I probably noticed it in passing nearly every day since then... I'd been aware that it was pretty much the last remnant of Dad's estate - but even that was kind of under my own radar, for the most part.  It wouldn't be out of line to consider that it became something akin to a "pet" dust bunny, perhaps.... not all that important, either which way, but also with no accompanying pressure to do anything more about it... but I did notice, today, that it felt totally right to go on and deal with it. 

There's nothing I can point to that explains this change in the butter's status - no event,  no lightning bolt of experience or insight - In fact, it's equally accurate to interpret that perhaps the butter itself actually *let go of me* today!!  The only change I can claim is that, this morning when I noticed the butter dish being there, as I reached for something else in there, the "charge" on it was different.  It was still my Dad's butter dish, but for what ever unknown reason, I didn't have to have it there anymore.... *that*, I noticed. And it was OK.

 The butter itself was certainly well past prime and went without ceremony into the trash can since our garbage pick up was today - and the container washed and dried with appropriate gratitude for the purposes it had served for both my Dad and my family all those years, and then for me as it lived in the back of my 'fridge for so long.  And it was all totally OK.

A funny little thing, this was. Perhaps notable only in so much that it really is rather unremarkable.  I threw out a bit of butter.  And that  --- for all intents and purposes --- is all it was, today.  Just a bit of butter.  But until today, even if I couldn't have put words around it because the whole experience of it existed only in a place of my being which was outside the reach of "words" or expression, still - it really had been something so much more.

Anyway - this story shared here in case it might be helpful in any way for anybody else who may happen upon these words.  Sometimes it's the silly things, the "meaningless" things when seen under ordinary light or by others who aren't in our shoes, that take on importances that we can't explain.  But here's testament that it really is true! No matter what the loss - there *will* come a time when things go back to their ordinary status -- a bit of butter returns to being just a bit of butter.  And having served it's purpose can now be released, and dealt with, and we all move on into the world (the term "we" including, of course - and it has to be said - the butter [insert smiley face here - LOL!]).

And all is indeed right with the world, again.

Much love - more later - Jan