Another chapter written....

Abraham Lincoln:
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

This weekend I had to do something that I had been putting off. There are some things in ones life that has to be dealt with whether you want to or not and this was one of those times in my life. Saturday evening I spent some time up at my dad’s place and helped his companion go through his belongings. Boy that was pretty difficult. There were some tears, but there was some laughter to go along with them. I never realized how much of a pack rat my father was. As for his clothing, well lordy he had some clothes that I would guess to be almost as old as he was! With a bottle of wine to keep us company, we got to work boxing up his clothes in order to donate them to the local Thrift Shops and the Salvation Army. On Sunday evening my brother came in from London and met myself and my other two sisters up at my dads. We spent some time reminiscing about both mom and dad. Again there were some tears but we couldn’t help laugh as each of us recalled different things in our lives that had happened. It’s hard to believe that mom has been gone for 22 years now. Well 22 yrs come November 24th. There were a lot of “oh my god, do you remember this?” And fits of laughter rang throughout the apartment when my brother pointed out the huge almost afro like perm I had in a few of the pictures. All I could say was, “what the hell was I thinking when I had that done????????” I laid claim to all those horrid pictures so that I could make sure that the days of DM and her fro would never been seen again! We didn’t realize how late it was, so we ordered a pizza and of course had more wine while we finished going through all the pictures. I’ll admit my childhood and teen years were filled with more than a few traumatic events and it was certainly no picnic by any means, but when all is said and done, I survived and that’s what is important.

So, now another chapter in my life has been written and as we all left with some sentimental possessions of my fathers, I looked around one last time and whispered softly “Rest in peace Mom and Dad” and then closed the door for the last time.