As we take apart their house,
we wish for the single object that
encapsulates their lives to carry with us
into ours, one that sums up the story,
settles the score, calls it a day.

We have candidates—Dad’s ski boat
that pulled his three girls around the lake—
Mom, my sister and me—jokingly
christened the Jandolene by Aunt Judy,
using syllables from each of our names.

The mystery light that insists on turning
itself on without timer or a hand nearby,
to which we say when we enter the house
and see its bright greeting, “Hi, Mom and Dad!”

And while we will keep these things in the family—
along with the 1950s upright piano and all
the music stuffed into its bench and nearby
bookcase, as well as Mom’s pale pink wedding
dress draped by the bathrobe she wore while
nursing two babies—they aren’t what we’re
looking for.

I am alone in the nearly empty house
that once cocooned us all when my
cerebral cortex lights up like the vintage
Christmas lights that Dad used to string
under the eaves, the message crawling
across the movie screen in my head:

Honey, you’re done. Both of you. You did good.

It’s the news flash of our lifetimes that
comes not in words but in fading, flickering
photos from a celestial album:

Two parents, two daughters—we enacted
the story of our family quartet to its conclusion,
sang and played our respective parts as scripted,
though we never saw the pages. We could not
have done it differently or better. We could not
have changed it—what happened to us,
between us, among us—was meant to be.

And now the curtain has closed; we mere
players have made our entrances and,
for two of us, our exits.

And that’s when his voice resonates,
the bass in our quartet, accompanied by
his great bear paw on a daughter’s shoulder
after a band concert or a synchronized swimming
meet, the sweet grip as he hauled a single ski
out of the water and gave us a hand up
into the boat, dripping and grinning:

Atta girl. Good job. Bee-yoooo-ti-ful.