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FACTS & ARGUMENTS

I want my grown sons to remember their father, but I can't bring myself to go through all his things, Kit Flynn writes

Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.

My house is filled with ghosts. They seem to convene here, leaving their treasured belongings and leaving me feeling overwhelmed.

Oh, I know it is normal for people in their 50s to inherit certain things from deceased family members, but I have been on the receiving end for 30 years. Must I be the keeper of so many stories? This responsibility weighs somewhat heavily. Especially the life story of my sons' father.

My basement, for instance, is packed to the rafters with ancestors' things from the Second World War: ammunition boxes, letters, poems, watches, medals, diaries, wedding photos. Let me tell you, I have it all. I also have figurines, bone china, silverware, antique spoons and at least 10 silver trays. I've dedicated an entire antique cabinet – and yes, it, too, was inherited – to properly display silver bowls, candlesticks, multiple silver tea sets, engraved beer steins, baby cups and more.

I have my ancestors' paintings, ones they painted and ones containing their portrait, and many family life stories written in books, spiral booklets or binders.

There's jewellery, too, loads of it – requiring four large hanging jewellery organizers – from my great-aunts in Pembroke, Ont., grandmothers, great-grandmothers and an early bequeath from my mother.

Collections-R-Us, too. Oh yes. My basement holds an extensive stamp collection, a valuable hockey-card collection, a huge coin collection and the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I've even got an antique train set. All were important things to someone I've loved. When I die, Antiques Roadshow would be wise to quickly nab a parking space in my driveway.

The really-difficult-to-joke-about collection is what I have from my deceased husband, John. He died at 43 and our boys, then 5 and 7, are now 26 and 28, and they don't really know how much there is of him in my house. I always talk about their dad, but there is so much more to show and tell.

Since John had been a freelance journalist and on-air host for TV and radio, I have a wide range of media: articles he wrote, his demo tapes and some show tapings. I have the things he held most dear, such as his guitar, his song books and favourite poems. I have his eyeglasses, a watch, a ring and his box of childhood treasures, including Scout badges.

But the most difficult to sort through are our family mementos.

We enthusiastically documented our joy at being the parents of two active and spectacular little boys. The stack of material is shocking as we only had seven years of normal family life in total, from our first pregnancy through to our second, and then a few years as a complete family before receiving his terminal diagnosis. We produced audio tapes of our family's voices, wrote funny letters, designed creative T-shirts, took loads of photographs and especially loved video-taping. And I have every single bit of it, including his final heart-breaking video message to his sons.

The problem? It's nearly impossible to watch, listen or look at any of it without being overwhelmed, and it's impossible to organize the stockpile without looking at it. I am fuelled by the responsibility of passing on the history of his-story but oh, the melancholy.

To protect the most precious items from possible wet-basement disasters, I've stacked things in my messy, memory-laden office on the third floor. I keep the door closed, mostly. I'll gingerly walk between the piled-high banker's boxes of tapes, cassettes, photos, slides and files if I really must use the computer printer, otherwise I don't venture close. For years, I have preferred working at my dining room table as I can calmly gaze at my glass cabinet with the sorted and orderly silver collection properly honouring the original owners.

On one hand, I am the keeper of his-story, yet I can't bring myself to write the narrative and immerse myself, listen to, look at, sort, label and to properly organize the loads of material. On the other hand, I don't want to lose the opportunity to have my sons get to know their biological father even though they have an adopted father in their lives whom they also consider their dad.

"Start with 30 minutes per day," one organization expert says, "and set a timer." I tried that. It sets up melancholy that lasts the whole day. Not fair for my new husband, my girlfriends or anyone else around me.

"Address it 24/7 until the job is finished," another says. I tried that approach, too, over a long weekend once and realized it would take a month of full-time hours to finish. The effort also zapped my energy for weeks afterward. It wasn't depression, but immersion into a bittersweet time of my life, and it took a great effort to return to the present.

"Do nothing" can be wise advice and I suppose I have been doing just that. For years.

One day, perhaps not too long from now, my sons, Mackenzie and Jackson, will ask about their dad in more detail. No matter how hard it might be to complete, I do plan to hand them the legacy of John Proctor in a combination of audio, visual and written form. I will fearlessly produce it with love and trust the energy to complete it will come in its own time. I am his story's keeper, after all. An honoured role as well as an overwhelming one.

In the meantime, I'll keep my office door firmly shut and continue sorting crystal.

Kit Flynn lives in Ottawa.