While we pick through items, an aura of finality seems to encompass us, knowing this important chapter in our lives will be closed forever, never to be resurrected again.
As we clean we find old items that haven't surfaced in years. We handle them and wonder. Where did this piece of history originate, and why did mom or dad keep it all these years. Some things we remember fondly and mentally place them in an era of our lives that usually harks back to a certain time of our youth.
We wonder too, what has become of our childhood. Where did it go so fast. We can relate with the poet who wrote, "life is swifter than a weavers shuttle".
Tomarrow we're planning a yard sale, or basement sale, or garage sale. Whatever we call it, we desperately need to rid ourselves of stuff. Judy, Loretta and I will make off with some of the items that prove to be useful, or have sentimental value, but we can take only so much. My sisters and I aren't lacking for household items, but the sentimental value in many things prevents us from discarding everything, so we will take things we can use and things that carry memories to which we want to cling.
Some things have a vivid history, originating way back to folks' early days in Kansas. Many were brought from Missouri to California, then back to Kansas again.
We're discovering memories attached to almost everything. How are we supposed to deal with that? We'll take what makes sense to take, sell much of what's left and give the rest away, I suppose.
We leave our parents' home with sadness, doing the best we can to assuage the emptiness we feel in our hearts. We are experiencing the circle of life. Mom and dad gone, taking the sheltering umbrella with them, leaving us with empty hearts, at the same time watching their progeny multiply and grow. Even as we work to tidy up the old family home for the next occupant, great grandchildren are coming into the world, and some day if time permits, the circle of life will be repeated, each in their own situation and under their unique circumstances.
It's the end of an era and with mixed feelings we will go on. We will look back often to those bucolic days in Missouri. We'll recall the trauma of change, moving west into the California sunshine, facing its strange culture and different ways.
We, as a family have come
A long way, building our own lives, scattering across this great nation and beyond.
The last six years or so, have been frustrating, tumultuous and at the same time flavored with a certain satisfaction, caring for our parents in their time of need.
So now we will go on, pondering the memories, wondering if we will ever come back to this little town on the prairie. We, as a family, are so used to gravitating to this spot. What will draw us now that our parents are no longer here? Our aunts and cousins and friends wonder the same thing. Will we ever come back?
I intend to. I left part of me here and I will come back and reacquaint myself with that part if my heart I left behind.
