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February 1 Clearing out Mother's Strawberry Hill apartment was well underway. Figuring out what to do with things, many of which had high sentimental value, was a difficult chore. I believe that Sister Jan, Brother Brian and I worked on this together in a way that would have made our parents proud. We also had help from friends, especially Mother & Father's old friends from First Baptist Church... |
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February 5 Closing down Mother's computer was one of the most difficult tasks for me. That trusty old Compaq had been mine back in 1997-98 and I gave it to Mother in 1999. Occasional small repairs and upgrades kept it humming right along for Mother, and right up to this day when I had to save files to be kept to my own laptop, and shutdown the old machine... |
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Just before cleaning off the old Compaq's hard drive, I opened a Messenger chat on my laptop to Mother's old account, one last time. We had chatted over the computer many times in the last few years - me out in Washington State, Mother in Charlotte - - this is what the chat window looked like. The photo that Mother used as her profile picture was shot at the Columbia River on July 26, 2002, when Mother and Father came out to Seattle for a visit. |
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February 7 My storage unit... |
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Sylvia Coffey and her granddaughter, and Sister Jan, at Strawberry Hill... |
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Bill Coffee, sorting through some of mother's video tapes... |
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Jan with Mother's upstairs neighbor... |
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In late January I was seasoning the Lodge skillet I received for Christmas and a flame-up occurred. I grabbed the fiery skillet with a mitt to rush it outside, but had to put it down for a moment to adjust my grip... thus the burn mark on the kitchen floor. Luckily, the flooring was scheduled to be replaced the following month anyway. Could have been a lot worse... |
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Dining room... |
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Living room... |
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Mother's room... |
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Jan prepared a delicious pecan pie, which had been our Mother's favorite, and we opened the bottle of Peach Cider that Mother and I had picked up at Cooley Farm back on August 19th of 2006... |
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For this special moment, my beloved Sister Jan read from a letter that she had discovered in Mother's things... a letter that my Father had written to my Mother during their courtship back in 1956. This was a moment that I will hold in my heart for the rest of my life |
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Jan and Brian leaving Strawberry Hill for the last time... |
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The Fall tree... the previous Fall we watched its leaves turn to brilliant orange and red, then fall away... |
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Mother's neighbor Clayton walked by, along with Guliver and Sadie... |
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I went back in one final time... stood in Mother's room, then drove away... |
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February 10 Visiting with Carina in Durham... |
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At Bob's house in Raleigh... Bob, Carina, and Foy... |
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Back at Bob's
house in Raleigh... Head tilted, eyes rolled back, hand on belly…
Foy let loose a mighty laugh! What was it that inspired such
rapturous cackle? |
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February 11 At Carina's house in Durham. Ward and Tugger... |
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February 12 I ended up camping on Carina's driveway for a week... |
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February 16 Carina took me to a fine Bar-B-Que house somewhere around Durham... |
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Carina's bird... |
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February 17 Leaving Camp Carina... |
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At Best Buy, having a security system installed, and an iPod module for the sound system, and XM radio. The work took two days and I camped at that spot during the night between. The installer at Best Buy did a fine job. |
