Unknown endings

I don't remember the last time I carried my son, the youngest of my six children. He was probably five; could have been six. Probably had to do with rudely foul weather and rushing the two of us from one sheltered area to another (perhaps our car). Or maybe I just carried him to bed.

I can't recall.

Hoisting and hugging and lugging my son was something I'd done many times a week since his infancy, decreasing, predictably, with each passing year, but taken for granted as a reliable feature of quotidian life, a thing I simply did, regularly and routinely, and would go on doing.

Only, I didn't.

I picked him up, that distant day, and carried him from some point A to some point B for some now indeterminate reason. And then I put him down and that was that. I was all done carrying my son and didn't know it.

It's a good thing, though, I'm thinking. We'd die too much inside should little unknown endings like these be recognized for what they are.

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