Boxes and Boxes

29 May 2017

Boxes and boxes of candles and tape
Figuring out why he's looking at that .....
.....
I'm liquidating all my assets
I'm calibrating all my fears
The pain is so excruciating
It's hard to fight the tears

                   --The Band Lawsuit

Today it was boxes.  We didn't bring a lot home from my mother's, but a few boxes that I need to sort through to see what I'm going to do with the stuff.  All this crap, as it were.

It's not exactly "excruciating" going through the boxes, but there were a few emotional moments.  I started with the jewelry.  It's not that she had expensive stuff, but some nice costume pieces.  I'm keeping one bauble that needs a chain, for me to wear.  It was given to her by the Bank of America and it is an amethyst, my birth stone.  But the rest of it I will probably give to my cousin, who makes jewelry from old jewelry.  I left her some things in her apartment but I fear for people coming in and stealing her things (already the piece that was probably the best of the lot, a real golden nugget on a chain, has disappeared)....so I stole them myself!  LOL.

I did find these, though.  I don't know if they are buttons or cuff links or what.

 

I don't know who the girl (or girl and boy) is/are.  Not a clue.  They were in a container on some sort of material that was so old it had disintegrated.  I am hoping someone in the family recognizes these.

The first box was easy to do.  It was stuff like that, some paper goods and clothes I'm donating to the SPCA.  I had to laugh at a box of lovely note cards that she had.  I laughed at me because I had the cards made for her, forgetting that she never wrote anything to anybody.  There was a camellia bush out in front of her house that had gorgeous blooms on it. She had picked two and put them in a bowl for the table one Cousins Day.  I took a picture of the blooms and then had the photo made into note cards.  She made all the delighted sounds of appreciation when I gave them to her many years ago, but here they were in my box, untouched by human hands.

 

The older she got, the more difficult it got to buy her things.  I found lovely soaps still wrapped, a bottle of her favorite perfume unopened (I thought I would score big time with that, but no.)  Kinda makes you wonder what's the point of putting so much thought and money into a gift you're sure she'd like and then have it ignored.  But candy and flowers are always good so I went with that for awhile.  She can't have real flowers now, and her apartment is already full of gorgeous arrangements of artificial flowers I got at Michaels, so pretty much no more flowers and thus on gift-giving occasions, I am one of See's candies' best customers!

The box contained beautiful letters from Jeri and all the photos I took on the trip Jeri and I took with Char and her daughters to France and Italy.  I don't know where my set is, so I'm happy to have those.  She also had a print-out of every Funny the World written while we were away.

And then there was the Big Envelope, one of those 9x12" jobs filled with newspaper articles. There were a few about her work with Hospice of Marin, but the bulk of it was filled with articles about Lawsuit (including the full page article the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about a popular band that was quitting after 10 years because it couldn't get a recording contract.  I am particularly proud of that article because I have had marvelous success in getting publicity for people and this was my magnum opus.

And then there were these:

 

Now that's just obnoxious.  

We made headlines above the fold in the Davis Enterprise twice each time one of the kids died, there was a big write-up on Paul in the Sacramento Bee (the one on  the right there) and another one in the Sacramento News and Review, the paper for which I now work, written by the woman who is now my boss.  I dropped her a note telling her I had found this 1999 article and she said she had not even connected my name with Paul.

Sometimes there is something about being too well known in town!  (And for those latecomers unaware of the circumstances of Paul's death. the coroner ruled it suicide.  I have never believed that, nor have most of the people who knew him best.  If suicide, it was suicide by stupidity, not by intention.)

The best, though, was the article written by Bob Dunning, Davis's version of Herb Caen (for those of you who know who Herb Caen was).  It's headed "an all-too-early end to one of our brightest stars" and yes, this one made me a little emotional. 

Too young.  Too full of life.  Too full of passion.  Too much to live for.  Too able to make us laugh.  Too able to make us cry  And now gone.

He had a presence on stage that was electrifying. ... His angry, crazed, incredibly funny and deeply moving one man shows were legendary.

In a town that has produced so much brilliance, he was one of our brightest stars."

That pretty much ended my box-sorting for the day.