THINGS

Coker, Alabama

Weather: low 75 degrees, high 94 degrees, mostly cloudy, scattered showers

We were at the house by 0900 hours, and I had the attic emptied by 0930 hours. I'm glad I got an earlier start because it was already heating up. The heat seems to concentrate in the attic, and it gets worse as the day goes on. About noontime, we got a shower that lowered the temperature, and the rest of the day was cooler.

Everything from the attic was placed on the floor of the garage where Terri could go through it. Some of the stuff was easy for her to make a decision on, and some of it was difficult because it was personal items. Things like keepsakes for Thomas, photos, Christmas items, etc. In the end, some of the items were set aside for scanning and others were put aside so she could think about what to do with them.

We understand how difficult it is to give up THINGS that a person has accumulated over the course of twenty years. Several years ago, my mother went into a nursing home because of several ailments that she was suffering with. As a result, she had to give up the apartment she had. Carolyn and I had the task of going through her possessions and belongings and cleaning up the apartment. It was one of the hardest chores either of us has had to do. My mother had a lifetime of memories, pictures, and little possessions that we had to move out and find a home for or dispose of. In the end, we got it done, but as I said, it was difficult. That made us decide that we needed to go through our house and start taking care of things so that if something happened to us, our daughters wouldn't have to do it.

When we were getting ready to sell our house, we had to go through the THINGS we had accumulated over more than 40 years of married life. I can remember seeing Carolyn sitting and wiping her eyes as she looked at pictures or little keepsakes from our daughters' childhoods. The way I handled that was to tell her to keep whatever she wanted, and that we would find a way to store them. In the end, we were able to take pictures of items, scan all of our pictures, and give many of the items to our daughters. Some time later, we realized that we had been keeping a house to keep a roof over our THINGS. It is kind of liberating to know that the only THINGS that we really need are in our RV with us or in a safe deposit box. Beyond those THINGS, we don't need anything else.

More later, be safe.

Today's Town - Cody, Wyoming: Rodeo Capital Of The World

Not all who wander are lost.