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You know
So, summer disappeared in a hurry. How the heck did that happen? Didn’t we just put the lawn chairs out about a week ago? I know. I know. We’ve got oodles of good weather ahead, before we have to find the shovels and scrapers and antifreeze. Is this what getting old is all about? Time flying while we stand in the middle of the yard scratching our heads?
Today, as I enjoy the last of the good weather, my mind drifts back to almost a decade ago when my family buried our parents. They died about a year apart, Mom in 2008 and Dad in 2009. After all was said and done, the brothers and sisters had to make a date to go through the treasures of their lifetime and decide what to keep, what to donate and what needed to go to the dump. We had a little plan-of-attack meeting before we went in. Deep down, I knew each one of us was worried about what we might find in their house. Aside from a fridge and freezer bulging with elderly food and a kitchen garbage can full of fuzzy-wuzzies, we figured we might come across things our parents didn’t really want us to see. Things that you don’t think your parents would have owned. We were afraid our parents might not have been prepared for the inevitable. Seriously, who wants to find out a much loved and respected family member might have a secret stash of “you know”? And it made us laugh because our parents were very liberal and progressive people. Literally anything could have turned up in the deep recesses of their closets, in their night tables and the dark nooks of the basement storage areas. As it turned out, our parents had planned for the future, both financially and “you know”, otherwise. We found stacks of greeting cards and photographs, film negatives and correspondence. One box contained childlike handmade greetings from us to them. The back bedroom shelves groaned under the weight of every National Geographic magazine that ever appeared in their mailbox and alongside those was a seriously old set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the laundry room we also found a case of Labatt’s 50 which wouldn’t have been a day younger than 10 years. No one really remembers seeing my mother drink alcohol and my father had given up booze and cigarettes in the ’70s. Perhaps Dad was saving it. Maybe he was going to crack one last beer before he checked out. The beer got poured out and the bottles were recycled.
The thing is, without us really knowing what was going on, our parents had slowly started to clear out and downsize years before they passed away. Any visit to their home meant you might leave with “your” report cards from the 1950s, or your medals and trophies from track and field or hockey or swimming. Sometimes you’d be handed a shopping bag containing a piece of jewellery or a bunch of toys. My parents lived through the Depression. They kept a lot of things they thought might come in handy someday. In the basement storage room we found my Dad’s hockey skates from the late 1930s. Maybe he thought he’d go skating one more time, perhaps while he was drinking his last beer. We found a little metal box with my Mom’s Brown Owl pin from the 1950s. We swooned over Christmas decorations we’d forgotten we’d made in Scouts, Brownies and in art classes. We giggled about Dad’s “paint pants” and Mom’s green garbage bag full of itsybitsy fabric scraps. All of the things we found were humbling to us. Our parents were ordinary people who loved their kids. I truly believe there was something in their house for each of us to find. And so it seems each of us did find something.
Autumn days make me nostalgic. I know all of my brothers and sisters were happy to find, in Mom and Dad’s house, the things we found. And we still laugh because we didn’t find any “you know”. Guess I’ve got my work cut out for me, you know.
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