CA-lunk

CA-lunk, CA-lunk.  The nearly empty dumpster echoed as I tossed each travel photo album into its cavernous void. These weren't just any travel albums--they were remembrances of Mom and Dad's joyful journeys together across the globe.  Australia, New Zealand, South America, Western Europe, Alaska...such adventures.  I'd looked through the photos before deciding to toss them, and what I saw on Mom's and Dad's faces time and again was curiosity, delight, happiness. The captured images had brought them back to their yearly get-aways, but for me and my siblings, we figured the photos held little significance.  Time to toss, time to be thankful for the chance our folks had to embrace the world, and then let go. This tossing is double-edged.  It feels cleansing (in the sense of it's gone!), but also poignant, in the sense of it's over. Even as I dumped in the expired health and beauty products, the fact Mom and Dad had been vibrant and quite healthy when they'd used this lotion or that shampoo left me pondering things...

It's been a mostly solitary journey in this apartment's clearing-out process. For nearly a month I've worked physically, but also mentally--sorting, removing, storing, transporting--the items of Mom and Dad's past daily lives. Some days I'm overwhelmed by fatigue, caused by my inability to sleep through the night without awaking with a jerk and mulling over my next step, planning my next day's schedule.  But other times I've stopped midway through an opened box, removed an item, fingered it, marveled at it, pondered its origin or significance.  And I'd shake my head at some things whose function was confusing,  undefinable.

So at this point the furniture is gone to kids' or grandkids' homes/apartments (or the storage unit for our future estate sale), and what remains is now in piles, strategically placed with my mental label of Salvation Army, storage unit, home, shred.  In 48 hours it should be over, this journey into my parents' lives.  I feel strangely responsible to protect what they loved, value what they valued, have joy in their past delight.

My dedication to this project has been a journey, as most marathons are.  I've grown in having accomplished it, and I have a deep respect and admiration for the lives Mom and Dad lived and the roads they traveled. And I feel fortunate to have touched the past.  Now time to let it go.