Farewell to Florida

Farewell to Florida

"I was not your boon companion." I say aloud to the house in which I labor sweat-covered in the dank and fetid September heat.

"You are not my familiar hearth, nor my beloved childhood home."

But unbidden tears still wash my face and choke my faltering voice as I bid good-bye to my parent's home on this final Florida night. Tomorrow it will belong to someone new and the ghosts of my family will have to adjust.

Memories cloud rational thought as I sort through thirty-four years of Florida living. I remember my bitter sadness as my parents blithely spoke of warming their aging bones in a land alien to me. My own children were mere babies then, and I grieved the loss of my parents and youngest brother as if they had died.

Stretching, I begin the dreaded chore.

Carefully preserved in shoeboxes, hundreds of photos depict our family's lifetime. Some, taken a century before, show children who would become my ancestors. Others recall our precious visits shared in Florida's forever summer. In one, my three sun squinting, swim-suited babes stand by a plastic pool, looking for all the world like those kitsch souvenir monkeys: "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil." They pose happily, oblivious to the record-breaking snowstorms blowing about back home. In another, they smile as they flank the grandparents they learned to know and love on that long ago trip. A final one shows the great-granddaughters my father never met, but would have loved dearly.

I sit cross-legged on the floor amidst the remnants of lives lived in the warm sun.

My Mother's "heirlooms" surround me, silently awaiting my sorting gaze. How do I choose? Her cherished Homer Laughlin wedding china, its dainty flowers and gold trim worn and faded, vies for packing space with a lifetime of gifts lovingly chosen by grandchildren at dime and dollar stores. Knickknacks of every description crowd around me, pressing close to other items begging to be kept. The snow-white French porcelain shepherdess haphazardly cradles a plastic dog as she lies against Great-grandmother Reilly's prized tapestry of Adam and Eve, captured forever in flight from that biblical garden.

My mother, a survivor of the great depression, would have me keep everything, but space is at a premium. Across the many hundreds of miles separating us, I feel her reproachful eyes following my every move. The move north has been a difficult transition, almost impossible for her to bear. I pack my choices carefully.

Family lore holds that our most priceless "treasure" is a painting, given to my parents by an elderly cousin known as "Aunt" Katie. A famed senator patiently worked this amateur rendition of the Maine seacoast. Aunt Katie, a trusted employee, admired his effort. In her eyes it was the coast of her beloved Ireland. When he died, the painting became hers. At the end of her life, she returned to her homeland, leaving her treasure behind as a gift for my parents. It goes in the keep pile.

Memorabilia left by my dead Father is more difficult to sort. Ancient merit badges, pins and membership cards, fraternal and military, all demand my attention. His rosaries, religious medallions, and talismans silently scream at me, reminding me of the faith I rejected.