Mom's Moving Day

There is something bittersweet in moving my Mom out of her house that she shared with my Dad for his final years. A house she had lived in, alone, for near on a decade. It's not my childhood home, far from it, but it was my parent's home.

Taking things apart, backing out screws, that I knew my Father had assembled years ago, I could almost feel my Dad with me. I could hear his voice echoing in my head as he explained where they should be placed, which were important and which we're not. So many things that he taught me over the years, that are just part of me, came back to me.


Many of the boxes that I moved had been used before.  Some of them had been used by my partners before.  A couple even had computer printed labels. Old labels, printed on a dot matrix printer, something my Dad did. Something I do. I hadn't realized it, but I my desire to label things traces directly to my parents.

I didn't just find labels on boxes.  The breaker box in my parent's house was completely labeled. Each breaker neatly labeled, each with its own computer printed label.