The 90-year long dash. What's in your dash?

Disclaimer: This starts off sad, but doesn't stay that way.

1912-2002
When my father passed away and we were tasked with the duty of writing his obituary, I couldn't believe we had to condense his life into three paragraphs. So much had happened during those 90-years that dash represented.
He shared his small town doctor father and his mother with two brothers and a sister. Growing up in the hills of southern Illinois during those much simpler times afforded him the opportunity to live a fun and carefree childhood, one where he could leave home of a morning with some of his little buddies and not return until sundown, where he could go swimming in the creek or fishing in the river, where he could wander through the woods and find his way back home - all without worrying his mother.
He survived the Great Depression, worked the copper mines of New Mexico, built LSTs in Indiana during World War II, delivered gasoline to small gas stations in southern Illinois, loved his parents with all his might, married my mother and together raised a family of four children and (this is very sad, but not uncommon) lived in the shadows of his siblings, whom, according to all accounts I've heard, his parents favored.
My father loved to fish, loved to go boating, loved to laugh and be the prankster. He loved his life in southern Illinois, but also recognized a decision to leave his cherished homeland was going to be one of the most important decisions he'd ever have to make. And so, in 1957, our family was Florida-bound.

That's really where my memories begin, because I was three-years old when we moved to Florida and my younger sister was a newborn baby.

One of the stories I so badly wanted to include in Daddy's obituary was how he'd let my younger sister and me sit on the back of the sofa while he sat there watching television. Not really unusual, right? But what made those times so special to us is that while we were sitting over his shoulders, my dad would let us put his hair into little curlers. How many fathers would do that? When I think back to those times, I can see how silly he looked, but he didn't care.
Don't get me wrong, our lives were not perfect. We had our problems; Dad had his - but compared to so much of what we see today, it was charmed.

I could go on and on - all kinds of stories I would have liked to have included in his obituary, so it didn't sound as though he was "here today and gone tomorrow;" so many good things, learning opportunities, loving moments, struggles and more are included in that dash.

After he passed away, it was soon time for Mother to move in with us, and that same feeling came over me when she had a yard sale. The things my father treasured so much - his tools, fishing rods and reels, lawn equipment, and his massive collection of baseball caps - all meant very little to those cheap yard sale frequent flyers. I cried my eyes out when his caps, that he spent a lifetime collecting, ended up in a big box going to the local charity thrift store.

Fast forward to today.

You can probably guess where this is going, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the ending.

I've spent the week cleaning out my mother's bedroom (very slowly going through one drawer at a time), and I'm back to thinking about how her 94-years have now been reduced to just a few boxes, packed up and ready to be donated to charity.
There is a bit of a difference this time, though. Thank goodness, Mother made things pretty easy for me. Before she moved in with us, she went through her life's treasures herself, decided who she'd like to give them to, and did it. She boxed up her silver service for my younger sister, gave her dining room furniture to my niece, gave a wooden cabinet made by my brother when he was a kid taking a shop class back to him, and so on. By the time she did move in with us, she had reduced her worldly goods down to what would fit in her new bedroom and living room.

After cleaning out Mother's dresser and closet and boxing up her things for charity, I went through a few of her containers of Christmas decorations and added more to the stack of boxes ready for the trip to the thrift store. I needed to then reorganize my garage, which Mom said I did way too often, so I'd have room for the boxes until I have the chance to put them in the truck and actually take them to the thrift store.

Here's the really cool thing that has happened all day.
Remember my post written on Feb. 5, 2013 entitled "The Red Bird Comes All Winter," and I talked about how the cardinal was my mother's favorite bird? http://alwaysonmymindforeverinmyheart.blogspot.com/2013_02_05_archive.html

All day today there have been two cardinals, a male and a female, following my every move. They were in the bush outside my mother's bedroom window this morning while I packed up her things. I needed to put the boxes in the garage, and when I opened the garage door to let in the beautifully cool breezes, the two cardinals were standing right there on our driveway!
The whole time I was in the garage, they were flitting between the small tree that sits right outside the garage door and the oak tree that's at the end of my driveway. And now I'm sitting on the back porch, and they are flying between the three cypress trees, stopping every once in a while to get some seed out of the feeder.

I feel as though both Mom and Dad have been right here with me all day, and that has made what I feared to be a daunting task so much easier.

                    Here's the male cardinal, but "Mom" wouldn't sit still long enough for me to get
                    her picture, which is pretty typical of Mother. She hated having her photo taken.

So, even though the remainder of my parent's "things" have now been packed into boxes taking up a relatively small space in my garage, 48 of my dad's 90-years and 58 of my mother's 94-years will forever be in my heart and on my mind. Their lives have not been reduced, but rather I'm bubbling over with tales and memories of the past. And someday, I hope to share those stories and more with grandchildren, extending the lives of my parents longer and farther. In the meantime, my son, who loved his grammpa and gramma with all his might, will continue to hear more of those stories.