Tough stuff

This weekend... we threw a mans life in the garbage.
Sounds awful, when I say it that way.
My boyfriends father was a medic in the Korean war. He was biological father to two and adoptive father to two. He was a musher and for years had sled teams.  There is not much else I know about him other than the fact that he was 6'4 or thereabouts. He couldnt drink grapefruit juice because of his medications.(And he loved the stuff) and he battled Cancer for many years before I even met him.  That is what finally took his life a few short days after his birthday in February of this year. He was big into the military history, and the music that went with it. (Having been in the military I suppose) And he never spoke of the war or his part in it.
Anyway... this weekend.. after many weekends of sorting and agonizing over what to do about the things in his home, we decended on it and threw what we could carry out of it and sold off the rest. A life time of papers and photo memories and cans and jars and bags of coins. I hate this type of thing. I want to keep every picture or written memory but as was pointed out to me..... where do they go? Packed away once they come to our home, in a box and stashed in the basement never to be looked at. So I relented and it all went out to the dumpster.
We started hauling out at 9 and worked throught to 6:30. We met a few interesting people along the way like Dan who will be out new small engines guy. He came by with his young son Ryan who really really liked the globe on the desk.  That is now his. Dan took all the old metal off our hands and came out and removed our appliance garden as John liked to call it. Dan stripes everything apart for the metal salvage and sells it off for cash. I could go on more about Dan, met his wife later on who is 4 or 5 months pregnant... then there was "Off the Grid Mike or Doug" I cannot remember his name, he was by a few times on Saturday, and I got in conversation with him in the garage. He had driven in on a beautiful Harely Davidson motorcycle, and had wandered about to see if anything intrested him, and he made a couple purchases. He had that burley biker look to him and reminded me of the one guy on Myth Busters, the quiet sullen one who's name escapes me.
I was in the garage and duped the contenst of a large plastci bag to find it contained a rather large nest of mice. Needless to say, I screamed at the shock of seeing this pile of fluff move and a mother come flying out with what looked like about 6 babies stuck to her underside as she ran around looking for some shelter.
Well, "Off the Grid Mike or Doug" wandered in to see what the commotion was about and asked if I was OK. I explained what had startled me and while I spoke he gathered up in his hands the babies that had fallen of her teets and the other strays in his large hands and gently placed them agains the wall where mother had found a crack to hide in. "Don't worry about them he said, they are survivours, they will find another home." Another family came by and purchased the sofa, several chairs and lamps I think. They had just, after 3 years completed building their log home with the timbers he had cut and stripped himself. They DID have them milled and shaped to fit one on top of the other like the logs toys I played with as a kid but thats about all that they had done outside of thier own hard work. Salvaged doors and windows from other old buildings one of them being a Bigwin island building. They pulled out the album and we looked though three years of hard labor as they lovingly built thier home. That day we met three intersting families who make their lives in less traditional ways than most of us who hold 9 to 5 jobs. However and whatever it takes to get the food on the table. All of them your Jack of many trades. Each one of the men certified in many fields of skill and not stuck to any particular one day after day..... and everyone one of them seeming so very happy, and of all the people we met on that day, they were the most socialable. They scrounged around the house and saw the potential in the same things that many had turned thier nose up at.
So the house got cleared out and cleaned up. I got over having to throw stuff out that I wanted to see kept. I just got too tired to care. And afterall, the best memories are stored inside my head anyway. And I think we all made some new friends