When we were walking home from dropping off our car, I spotted a pair of jeans and a hat sitting on top of the snow. This was unsettling. The jeans were new. The day was cold. Where was the person who was meant to be in them? It was a bit like when you find one shoe on the highway. Why only one? And who lost it?
Two days later we were walking to pick up our car and saw this--the jeans now covered in a light layer of snow. This was more sad than unsettling, more final, more hopeless.