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So, My Mother and Brother Found This Box...
So, my mother tells me yesterday on the phone that she and brother found this good-sized plastic storage box hidden behind some of my dad's stamp books (he was a big stamp collector). They hadn't opened it yet, and they had no idea what was in it.
We figured: Stamp stuff. Or maybe some 45 rpm records.
They were going to open it and see what was inside.
Anyway, I've been kind of sick as a dog, so I told them to go ahead because, well, sick.
They opened it.
They found cards. Father's day cards, birthday cards, some Christmas cards. Just about every card we ever gave my dad.
There were doodles my brother and I drew when we were kids. Movie ticket stubs (not all of them, but there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason behind which ticket stubs were kept). Ticket stubs to plays we went to as a family. Baseball game ticket stubs. Programs from plays my brother was in. A couple of love letters my mother wrote to my dad when he was out of town on an extended training program one time. The MBTA pass and matching schedule for the day I graduated from college in Boston.
For some bizarre reason, a 1991 TVGuide where Star Trek was featured on the cover.
Bits and pieces of family life going back years that are puzzling as they are odd because none of us can figure out the rhyme or reason why these particular things were kept.
None of us even knew he kept all of this. That box was out in the open for years. I remember even seeing it. None of us ever wondered what was in it. None of us ever asked about it.
And yet, that's where my dad squirreled away all this stuff. My mother had never even seen him open that box. Not once in all the years they were married.
And we only just found it. Well, we didn't find it. It was there all along under our noses. We just never noticed it.
Christ. And now I'm crying again.
I thought I was okay with my dad dying. I guess not yet.
We figured: Stamp stuff. Or maybe some 45 rpm records.
They were going to open it and see what was inside.
Anyway, I've been kind of sick as a dog, so I told them to go ahead because, well, sick.
They opened it.
They found cards. Father's day cards, birthday cards, some Christmas cards. Just about every card we ever gave my dad.
There were doodles my brother and I drew when we were kids. Movie ticket stubs (not all of them, but there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason behind which ticket stubs were kept). Ticket stubs to plays we went to as a family. Baseball game ticket stubs. Programs from plays my brother was in. A couple of love letters my mother wrote to my dad when he was out of town on an extended training program one time. The MBTA pass and matching schedule for the day I graduated from college in Boston.
For some bizarre reason, a 1991 TVGuide where Star Trek was featured on the cover.
Bits and pieces of family life going back years that are puzzling as they are odd because none of us can figure out the rhyme or reason why these particular things were kept.
None of us even knew he kept all of this. That box was out in the open for years. I remember even seeing it. None of us ever wondered what was in it. None of us ever asked about it.
And yet, that's where my dad squirreled away all this stuff. My mother had never even seen him open that box. Not once in all the years they were married.
And we only just found it. Well, we didn't find it. It was there all along under our noses. We just never noticed it.
Christ. And now I'm crying again.
I thought I was okay with my dad dying. I guess not yet.
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Both of my parents died before I ever started a blog or before social media was so ubiquitous. However, of my friends, it is only the one who's most recent and who I am least close to who occasionally reads my blog. I suspect that it's not unusual that the people who we're closest to are the ones least likely to pay attention to these things.
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My Dad died last July 6th. I live about 2,500 miles away from him, (I moved away). My older sister, who is the only one of us who lives close by, and who is the executor of his estate, has had the difficult job of cleaning out the messy, dusty, in many cases dirty, smoky house. It has been hard on her emotionally.
I find for me, that oftentimes it is hearing music that I know he loved, or hearing or seeing something that I know he would enjoy, and I wish I could share with him, are the times that get me.
dying relatives.
My dad died about 6 years ago. I still miss him, even though there wasn't much of him left for the last few years -- he had Alzheimer's.
I still miss him. As I miss my mother, who died about 20 years ago. And my first wife, who died about 40 years ago.
Don't expect the tears ever to be completely gone. The tears now are just part of the love then.
-- hendrik
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