Chronicles of the Mass Exodus Episode 5: Memories…

In episode 4 of the CoME, I talked about how difficult it is to think of trying to pack and move the accumulations of a lifetime. How does one pack up memories into a plastic bin or cardboard box. How does one judge what goes with you and what goes into the landfill.

Well a friend in LCNM wrote a comment and said “Maybe you just write about them, then you have the memory forever!!” Thank you Clairz, it is a good idea and I think I will try that now.

My dad gave me a wooden box many years ago, I don’t really remember when but I have had it at least 25 years. He made it in woodshop when he was in high school so now it has to be 65 or 70 years old. I have kept it on a dresser and more recently packed up in a cardboard box until I took a hard look at it the other day. It’s a box, a simple wood box but it also is a foreshadowing of what he was to do later in his life. I look at it and see the kitchen cabinets in our old house, the ones he built by his own two hands. I see the renovations he did with my uncle to remove a window and put a door on the back of his house. I see the bathroom redo he helped me complete in my and the DW’s first house.

I know that I did not inherit his gift of working with his hands so even this box is not something I could have ever done. Not even this simple box. But he did. When he retired, he spent several years doing things he liked to do, working with his hands. Helping others build or fix things, making simple wooden crafts. These are the memories I want to keep, that travel so to speak in that box of mine. He can’t do this anymore. His dementia robbed him of that ability. It prevents him from even knowing his own kids any more. It robbed him from us.

But I still have that box for all the memories it contains. I will take it with me.

I know sometime in the near future, I will pass that box on to my son. I couldn’t give CollegeBoy the gift of working with his hands, it was not mine to have or pass on to him. But he will have those memories of mine to add to his own memories of his grandfather. Like my grandmothers dishes, it will be the gift of memories, not just a simple wooden box or some china, but memories.

Thanks Clairz that helps a lot…