Hubby was cleaning out the garage last week, getting things ready for winter, when he brought down two big plastics bins marked "Mum's mementos".  I asked him to put them in the mud room for me because I wanted to go through them.  The bins must have been sitting up in the rafters for the past eight and a half years, and prior to that, sat in my storage unit at my condo for four years.

I cleaned off the exterior and started going through the bins and the past came flying back to me.  I stored most of mum's knitting that she had done for the kids, old books and artwork that the kids had done at school.  I pulled out sweaters, baby blankets,baby shoes and even a first edition book of my mum's, "Babar The King".

Mum made baby blankets for all my children, actually for all her grandchildren, and for anyone she knew who was having a baby.  She also knit sweaters and hats and mitten for everyone.  She always had knitting on her needles, even when she was dying.  I still have the outfit she made for me to bring my son home from the hospital, over forty years ago.  All my children came home in that outfit.  I washed the outfit, carefully laid it out to dry and then packed it away again.

 

The Cowichan sweater in the top photo, was made by my son's paternal grandmother.  I had forgotten that I had saved it, but I'm so thankful I did.  When I was a young woman, Cowichan sweaters were the thing to have.  Mum even made me one, swearing the whole time she made it.  Sadly, most of the knitted sweaters are too small for Jack already, so I washed everything and put things back in the bin for him when he's an adult, and may or may not have children.  

I talked to my middle daughter, asking if she would want her baby shoes and blankets, she surprised me by saying yes, so I have a pile of stuff to send her.  When I talked to my daughter, she asked if I had all the old family videos.  My ex husband took a lot of videos when the kids were young and at some point had transferred them to CDs.  I told her that I couldn't remember if I had them but would look.  I found them in the first place that I looked, the drawers in my hutch, which also got cleaned out.  

The CDs were sitting on the counter when my husband came home and I told him that I was sending them to my daughter, that I didn't want them anymore.  When I woke up the next morning, he was copying them and cleaning them up, so that I would be able to watch them.  When I saw the video of my young daughters that he was working on, I burst into tears and thanked him.  Not all of the past was bad.

So this past week has been about memories and death cleaning.