Things we will leave behind

Ma was in the hospital. In ICU.
“Where’s my sweater?” she asked.
They’d had to cut up her sweater when they took her in the ambulance.
“It’s gone, Ma. They had to cut it off you.”
I watched her as she thought about it, absorbed it.
“Well, I got my use out of it” she said, or, “It did its job” – something like that.
And I thought, how grateful she was, and how we have to be able to leave even things we are grateful for behind.