Photographs and Memories

Posted on February 7, 2015 under Storytelling with one comment

Faded memories

 

 

“Photographs and memories, Christmas cards you sent to me.”

Photographs and Memories – Jim Croce

The first time I ever moved, I was given an old rickety suitcase, ten bucks and a one way ticket to British Columbia.  My only other possessions were my guitar and golf clubs.  I left a trunk at my parent’s house, filled with memorabilia from high school and university, including some pretty wild clothing.  This would be retrieved many years later when my mother finally sold the family home.

I have lost count how many times I’ve moved over my lifetime; during my years of bachelorhood and then as a couple with children.  And I won’t even begin to estimate the number of moves that I have been involved in with our kids, family and friends.  Makes me think of Carole King; “…so far away, doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore? “

After stops in Victoria, Fairview and Whitelaw, I moved back home and settled down.  During the past 30 plus years as a family we’ve spread our good cheer (and furniture!) all over the town and county of Antigonish.  We’re big believers in equal opportunity.

And so, once again, we find ourselves dialing up Donald at Antigonish General Trucking for assistance with the heavy lifting.   Yes, we are taking up residence in a co-op apartment building again, coming full circle.  And this will be our next to last move.

It’s never easy relocating, but doing a major downsizing requires patience and a healthy dose of ruthlessness.  The running medals.  Gone.   Excess dishes, old CD’s.  Thank you Canadian Diabetes Society – we will have lots for you to pick up next weekend!   And (gasp!) even the treasured wedding gown gets stuffed into a bag for the Opportunity Shop.  I feel fortunate that she didn’t end up throwing me into one of the garbage bags.  (It ain’t over ‘til it’s over – Editor)

Moving the big stuff is a piece of cake, but it is the small things that really take the time.  Just about everyone has a drawer in their kitchen or some other room in the house that collects a little bit of everything.  You know the one where you just might find a few paper clips, coin rollers, shoe laces, string, a partial roll of duct tape, a few marbles that you played with as a child, a bobby pin, some loose change, Band-Aids, clothespins, thumb tacks, a half package of stale cough drops, your birth certificate, a card of matches and the stub of a candle.  Yes sir.  A real treasure trove that has to be sorted.

And why do we hold onto an old, faded marble?  So that we can honestly say, at any point in time in the future, that we haven’t lost all of our marbles.

Yes indeed, this house holds a lot of memories.  It was our third house in three decades and we saved the best for the last; a wonderful home in the most friendly, welcoming, neighborhood that one can imagine.  It’s too big for just the two of us now, and the handywoman has grown weary.  So here we go again.

And what do you do with the 1500 photographs sitting in a couple of large boxes?

Our parent’s generation were great organizers.  They had to be, trying to herd anywhere from 6-10 kids. So it is not surprising that most of them carefully preserved pictures for over fifty years in precisely marked photo albums.  We did pretty well until around the time that our third child arrived, and then a cardboard box became the repository for a gazillion pictures.  And then a second cardboard box.  The pictures piled up like snowdrifts over the years.  Not to mention the digital collection lurking on our hard drives.  We will organize them after the move.  At least that’s what we’re threatening to do.

The house sits empty except for one final item.  The first thing that we moved into our house 13 years ago was the coffee pot, and it is only fitting that it is the last to leave.

And why did I say earlier the “next to last move?”   The last move for me will be to one of our two fine funeral homes.  And if there has to be a stop in between, the front door of the nursing home faces MacIsaac’s and the back faces Curry’s.

Only a gurney, or the Jaws of Life, will pry me loose from this apartment.  It already feels like home.