The Ending Begins

Clarabelle and I are enjoying a quiet Sunday morning here in the living room while The Boy and Hubster sleep and The Girl has gone out to breakfast. There are biscuits in the oven waiting to be slathered with jelly, a fresh cup of coffee in hand, and a bright, sunny day to look forward to in our little part of the world.

Yesterday Sis and I met at Mom's for a final look-through of things before the estate sale agents arrive to sign the contract on Tuesday evening. We put things in closets that are not to be sold - cleaning supplies, trash cans, the family photos, pie plates, and the bean pot.

It's one of those things you just can't stand to have someone else have, yet you really don't want to keep it yourself. Grandma baked beans in that pot for seventy years. It's obviously old, it's brown, it's chipped, but it's still usable. It was one of the things that didn't sell in the auction of the farm so it came to live at Mom's when Grandma did. It puts quite a picture in my mind - Grandma toting a suitcase under one arm and a bean pot under the other.

We'll meet for the last time before the sale on Tuesday night to be sure we've cleared out the shed and gotten all of the gardening equipment out that we won't need in weeks to come. I still have a few boxes of things to remove and a few boxes of things to take over there before then. The estate sale team will come in on the 3rd to start staging and pricing things.

Then, on the 12th of June, exactly one year to the day from the day we first received that breathless call for help, the sale of the remainder of her worldly possessions will begin. So very much has happened in that year. So many joys, regrets, frustrations and loving times. So much to remember, and so much I'd like to forget.

Sis packed away the coffee pot and our cups. We aren't selling the chairs that sit at the bar in the kitchen. While we're ready to sell almost all of the possessions and the house, we're just not ready to give up our Saturdays just yet. It's been the way we've connected in the past six months since Mom's been gone. I'd like to keep that connection with Sis. It will take work on our parts without Mom, the glue that held us together, but it can be done.

And I hope it is.