there comes a time.. when one parent passes, my mom was the first succumb to lung cancer, even as she was not a smoker… it took her way too soon at 78 years of life… .

you morn, but you have one parent still with you… in the 80s. very much alive ,but with a broken heart……. so you spend a great deal of your time, giving his home life with your visits, conversations and laughter.. you fill the absence as much as you can, but eventually as a few years go by, you begin to think of the time ahead dancing around you, but then you become acutely aware of the undeniable reality.

i don’t know how one can truly prepare for when they have no parents at all, especially if you are close to them. we have gone over all the paperwork , taking stock of all that is in the house , yet and not being able to imagine the time for when we will need to come together for breaking it all down and to to a divide some of items amongst us kids ,and then put aside that which will go into an estate sale or be given away………

yet despite putting on the brakes, the day comes ahead of what we were prepared for , and the three of us we were left with this home of so many years.. i was the one who who spent most of the time packing and organizing after we removed what was wanted.. there i found myself staring at every little morsel like holding onto the memories.. a lifetime…..

eventually the estate sale happened , and i was left to reckon with the empty spaces.. the few items that sounded an alarm of grief, the absence and finality, yet i found comfort in these empty spaces . a place absent of it all, but with a great scent of a long history of memories, family and life.

i took this moment, a few days of pause to be in these empty spaces, to come to terms with what it is to live a long full life… and to understand that one day comes to an end. what we are left knowing… it’s not the things that matter, but the memories embedded in them