Life in a box

My parents are both gone now. My dad passed away in April. My mom in September. Being an only child it fell to me to pack and relocate the contents of their three bed room apartment. As you might imagine this was not an easy chore.

For a year, while they were ill, I had been making decisions for them. Decisions about their care, decisions about their finances, decisions about almost every aspect of their lives and decisions about their death. And now I had one final decision to make. What to do with their stuff?

Some of it I moved to my own home. Some of it I gave to my children. Some to friends and relatives who I thought would have a strong connection to particular items. Some of it I threw away. But the majority of it went into boxes.

Among the things I boxed up was a box labeled "Mom". It was in my mother's closet, tucked away on the top shelf among other small boxes. Inside of it were things pertaining to my grandmother. (My mom's mom.) It was a relatively small box with pictures, some letters and notes, a card from her funeral service, some jewelry and her obituary from her hometown newspaper.

There it was. Her entire life in one small cardboard box.

I carefully sifted through it and when I was done I put the lid back on it and packed it away inside of another box.

Now my parent's lives are in boxes. I am done.

As time passes I will go through those boxes, culling out the un-important, disposing of those things which no longer have meaning to me. And at some point, I will have distilled each of their lives into a single cardboard box.

Then, some day, when I am gone and my children are placing my life in boxes, they will find those single boxes. They will carefully sift through the contents. Some of it will make them smile, some will make them sad. And when they are done, they will close the lid and put them inside another box with my stuff and the process will start over.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Eventually, my life too will reside in a single box. I wonder what will be in there?