Your life is pared down at the end of it all, not as you would want it but as it has to be.

A near 80 years of collection tossed off as shackles even though you saw them as the ties that bind,

Binding your life together, year after year, memory after memory.

All lie in heaps of refuse waiting to be hauled away to a place where the forgotten reside for eternity.

Those left behind pick your bones and assemble your kingdom, all at the same time.

Assessing you with their own judgements.

Unable to defend or bask in the glory, you watch from beyond with the faint hope that you have not passed by this place unnoticed.

The rendering of a life comes to us all without our say.

The richness of what remains is determined as we make our choices along the journey.

One can only hope the choices were then well made.