I made a trip to see my parents. They put their much loved, but difficult to maintain home up for sale and moved to a small cottage in a retirement community. Both of them acted out in expected fashion prior to the move on Monday. My mother was argumentative, my father obsessively packed random objects in the middle of the night. My brothers helped them move into the cottage, I came out this past weekend to help unpack boxes and see what they need to be settled and comfortable. I now have a list that includes a non-slip bath mat for the guest bath, a pair of pretty slippers for my mom and a couple more sets of new towels of the bath and kitchen variety.
My dad pointed out a box and bag, set aside for me to take home. The bag held some quilts and shams. The box contained the rest of their wedding silver, including my favorite pair of silver candlesticks, two birth certificates, the one from the hospital marked “baby number 2”, and some miscellaneous items from college and high school.
There was one carefully wrapped object that turned out to be a photograph of me at age sixteen, dancing with my maternal grandfather at a family wedding. I was genuinely surprised that my mother let the picture go, as she adored her father and it is one of the last photographs of him healthy and vibrant. Shortly after that wedding he became incapacitated by a series of strokes and died a month before I turned nineteen.
I am glad she let it go, as I adored my grandfather too and she has all but admitted that I was he favorite grandchild of both her parents.
