We extracted cases and cases of jars from the dispensa and from the two storage units on the other side of the finca. Some had been placed there nearly two decades ago. They were cherries and figs and myriad other comestibles preserved for an unknown future in this realm by a person who no longer lingers in said realm. She was a product of another time, of a generation and a mentality that never accustomed itself to an abundance now taken for granted.
We forced each jar open with tines of forks and now cracked blades of cheap dinnerware. Contents were poured into buckets. One by one, I lugged these buckets to the stream that flows beside the house, that flows to river Tirón and finally is lost forever to the Cantabrian Sea. I tipped the buckets and hours and days and weeks and months of work slopped into the water.
It was work with intent but in the end no purpose. It was work with no purpose but its own doing, and later, its own undoing.
