House Cleaning

We spent the day in NJ celebrating my step-sister's birthday. While the celebration was relaxed, festive, and wonderful, we also spent a bit of time going through my father's things. Up to now, even going into his closet was a sobfest and his watches, t-shirts, beloved shoes, old cell phones, etc were all symbols of his death, ghosts of the years we should have had with him. His closet has been a reliably fragile place and I'm not sure how my stepmom has been able to handle those ghosts.

Today, about a year after his death, was a bit different. We're a bit different. We raided his closet, laughed about him, and talked about all the things that had happened in the past few months. It was a different type of memorial. One that had sadness running through it, under the surface of each person's thoughts, but one that was filled with happy memories, as one remembers only the good parts of high school.