End of an Era

Yesterday, Carolyn and I helped Dad and Mom begin to clean out their trailer at Flat Shoals. They closed on it yesterday, selling it to the next door neighbor, putting it in different hands for the first time in 40 years. It is a beautiful piece of property in Salem between Highway 11 and Flat Shoals on Little River. You can see the Blue Ridge Mountains to the north, east and west. The southern view looks down on a valley toward Flat Shoals. Dad bought it in the late 1960's and had a trailer on it for many years. He loved that property and I can remember dropping blood and sweat there myself, clearing the land. I was too young and stupid to understand the significnace of the land then. It is on the highest point in the vicinity. Lately, it had become increasingly difficult to maintain the property since they are both in their 80's. Mom had just about quit going there, and Dad had joked that Mom would sell it before he was buried if he died before she did.

Watching them go through their thngs and deciding what to keep and what to discard was painful. They had 4 decades years of their lives invested in the place, and they were having trouble deciding what to keep and what to discard. Mom told Carolyn that she was having trouble seperating herself from some of the objects and dad was very subdued as he began to make those hard choices. My brother Tom had already hauled some things off, so their final days at their retreat in Salem were beginning.

It hit me that they were ending a part of their lives that had been part and parcel of their happiness as a couple and that things would never be the same again. Part of their independence was gone and would never return. Still, these remarable people, my parents, did as they has always done. They worked through the process and were able to make hard choices together. More and more, I am grateful that I am their son. I can only hope that, when the time comes, I can be as at peace as they are in the face of such a loss.