The Bed

In 2015, my parents died and I inherited my great-great grandfather’s mahogany four-poster bed. I began sleeping in it, dreaming sometimes about my ancestors. Later that same year, my husband died, followed by my closest high school friend and other dear ones. The bed became a bridge to the growing company of departed spirits and a refuge in which to contemplate my fast-transforming life. Each of the 4 bedposts came to represent to me a previous generation who’d slept in that bed, made love, given birth and died in it.