Written for the Klaine Advent Drabble 2017 prompt "example". This is another one-shot inspired by an NPR segment, but is still personal. Warning for grieving/mourning.
"I think that's the last of them," Blaine says, referring to the boxes stored in the basement, which he's been carrying upstairs for his husband to go through. Before they arrived, Blaine had suggested renting a U-Haul, and taking all of Kurt's dad's belongings to their own house, to go through them slowly over the course of the week while they grieved. But Kurt didn't want that. He wanted this finished – the house cleared out and sold, furniture donated, and whatever odds and ends could be tossed in the trash done so before the Waste Management truck came around the following day.
Silence stretches between them as Blaine darkens the doorway of the upstairs bedroom where Kurt has planted himself, sitting on the floor and sorting through papers for the past hour. He'd been moving swiftly since he got started, tearing and shuffling and re-boxing and tossing in assembly-line fashion so quickly that Blaine couldn't see how he'd know if he missed something important. But he didn't want to stop him. If this is what Kurt needed to do, he'd let him do it. But at some point, Kurt got stuck on one box specifically, trapped in a daze with a handful of what looked like greeting cards clutched in his hands.
"I don't get it," he whispers, shaking his head slowly from side to side. "I just … I just don't get it."
"What don't you get, baby?"
"These … these cards." Kurt holds them up one at a time while he names them - "Baptismal cards, congratulations cards, graduation cards, Christmas cards, birthday, birthday, birthday, birthday … condolences." Kurt stares at the pile that has formed between his knees and shakes his head. "Why did he keep them all?"
"People hold on to greeting cards. I know my mother does. And all of my aunts." Blaine toes off his sneakers and sits on the carpet in front of his husband. He picks up the top two cards from the pile and looks at them – both of them anniversary cards from Kurt's mother, Elizabeth, to her husband, so he doesn't open them. It would feel like an invasion of privacy even though the cards are decades old, and both giver and receiver have passed.
"Not my dad," Kurt remarks. He doesn't explain further, but Blaine knows it's the truth. Burt Hummel wasn't the sort of person who developed attachments to banal things. He was the very definition of a practical man. He'd go through the mail the second he got it, tossing junk and ads into the recycling, writing checks for the bills and putting them in their respective envelopes while he stood just inside the front door. He didn't hold on to wrapping paper, didn't cherish the tiny, plastic ornaments that bakeries put on cakes, couldn't care less for the fate of curl ribbon or bows once presents were unwrapped. Finer details on special occasion items were often lost on him, which used to steam Kurt something fierce, who held on to everything, who so carefully cleaned and folded and stored anything he deemed a keepsake.
So, this box of greeting cards, with no explanation apparent for why it exists, makes Kurt angry – angry because there's a mystery to unravel here, but Kurt would need his father to help him solve it.
And his father can't, because he's gone.
"Maybe I could understand him keeping the cards from my mom, and the homemade birthday cards from me, from when I was little … maybe. But some of these, they don't … they just don't make any sense."
"Like which ones?"
"Like these, for example." Kurt hands over a small stack of cards that appear to have been ripped in half, then meticulously taped back together. "I got those when I turned nine, which was a few weeks after my mom passed away."
"These … these are condolence cards." Blaine looks from the cards to his husband, wondering if he's missing something.
"Ah, yes, but in the grand tradition of people saving money by combining events, they're actually birthday cards. Read the inscriptions."
Blaine flips the cards open, navigating the various different scripts to decipher their sentiments. "Happy birthday, little man. Sorry for your loss … Try to find some way to be happy on your big day … Happy Birthday. Here's five dollars. Buy something that will brighten your day …" Blaine tosses each card on the pile after he reads it, stunned by how utterly tone-deaf some of the remarks are. "Well that's … kind of awful."
"Which is why I tore them up and threw them away. My dad must have fished them out of the trash and taped them back together."
"Looks like it."
"But … but why?" Kurt asks – no, begs – his lower lip trembling, the strength that Kurt had left beginning to crumble with each card he pulls from the box.
"I … I don't know, baby," Blaine says, feeling his husband's shaking hands and curled fingers as if they were grabbing hold of his own arms, demanding answers. Burt's death had already broken Blaine's heart a hundred times over. Much like his own parents, he can't picture life without Burt. The prospects of waking up tomorrow and knowing he's gone? Blaine hasn't gotten that far. He can't let himself think on it. But watching his husband torture himself like this is shredding what's left of the poor, stuttering organ to pieces.
"That's right!" Kurt grabs the cards by the handfuls and shoves them back in the box. "You don't know, and I don't know. And I won't ever know because he's gone, and I'm never going to see him again! I'm never going to talk to him! I'm never … I'm never going to look him in the eyes … or … or hug him … or … or …"
Blaine takes Kurt's wrist gently, stopping him when he sees thin scratches on the backs of his hands begin to bleed.
"Maybe there is no big mystery to it." Blaine scoots a few inches forward, replacing the empty space between them with his love, his comfort. "Maybe this was just his way of preserving memories. You know, like scrapbooking."
"B-but … we had actual scrapbooks! We had picture albums galore!"
"You made those. Your mom took the pictures when you were little, then you took her place after she was gone. Maybe he felt left out."
"Then … then why didn't he say that? Why … why didn't he just … tell me?"
"Maybe he didn't know how. Maybe he didn't feel a need. Maybe this isn't meant for you to solve. Maybe it just is what it is."
"And that's why I hate it. Because time moves on for you and me … but it's leaving my father behind." Kurt removes his hand from his husband's grasp. He carefully replaces the last of the cards in the box and slides the cover on, the same way they did on his father's coffin the day before.
Kurt looks at the lid of the box, worn around the edges, a seam dented in the center, as if it's been open many times, traveled a dozen different places. It's been there with him his whole life without Kurt ever having a clue. Kurt tries to smile at that, at this secret his father managed to keep from a curious and precocious Kurt, who was always searching through his dad's private things for tidbits of his mother to hold on to. But it's too bittersweet, and tugs the smile from his face.
"I thought I knew everything there was to know about my dad, but I was wrong. There are things about him I'll never know."