Been a funny week all round... unexpectedly free for two and half days, I traveled up? Across? Well definitely over [the bridge], to England for the purpose of catching up with friends and collecting my mom... and nine boxes of her... of her life, god how awful, is that what it comes down to when we are gone?  That we are numbered by how many boxes we have, or haven't?

Above one of my step dads paintings, its of the George and Dragon in Northchurch, Herts, how it used to look, some time ago by far!

I took it into the pub on my way back home on Wednesday mid day, the land lord has said he is putting it to auction and bidding himself in the hope of keeping it in the pub... I will be checking to see if it remained in the pub, I do hope so, it was my intention, my step dad was a very local artist to the pub, both he and my mom had their wakes there, I had my first alcoholic drink there, without my parents being present!!  The pub sits opposite St Mary's church, where my great granddad William Randall and my great great granddad James Randall were sextons; my step dad restored a painting which still hangs there and, where I as a small child helped my gran Rosetta to clean the pews and tidy the flowers, lots of family connections going on there...

Between Tony's and the pub, was a drive down memory lane... Dagnal, Ashridge Forest, Northchurch common... I passed by our old home with my step dad, and then our home when we first came to England, the school of course, we mom, me, and my boys went to!  After leaving the pub I wanted to get some cash, [for the bridge], but couldn't part so had to do a drive around to get back onto the main road, only choice was the road my mom and step dad moved to after his stroke, not been around there a while...  Even the Tesco in Aylesbury, just before I started the long journey, I remember once when I was surprising mom and told her my Spanish house phone wasn't working, and I would call her the following day from my mobile, I did, from outside Tesco!  Bless her, Tony picked her up for dinner that night and suddenly I was there too! Surprise surprise!!

Popped into Milton Keynes for a coffee, well it had to be done, not been there for sometime, no big changes, in fact felt like only yesterday, a bit like meeting up with my friends, a day a year four years, all as one between real friends isn't it...

And today, emptied out the nine boxes! Was only going to do a couple as before long, a couple of minutes I became not just a little melancholy, how come I can spell that now without the spell check! lol, not good sign maybe...  The dining table now is covered with mom!  If you remember it was hard to choose between this n that, keep this or lose that... time was short and my moms life long collection had to be dealt with, I wanted to keep moms favorite things, her soap in the shape of dog, from where she was a child, he is cracked and only still in one piece due to the plastic wrap!!

And the photos, and letters... have made tonnes of notes to go through on my Ancestry pages, letters from my great grand parents to each other, letter from my gran to my mom and back, letters from me to my mom... I wish more had been written on the back of most of the photos... using a magnifying glass I peered at their faces and clothes, clothes from Mr Selfridge and Downton Abbey! A huge family connected to Bar Harbor... a family, photos of my mom and her parents, the family they stayed with, letters from them to my mom, even books and a tankard... I know who they were, but not the whys and wherefores... time to get cracking and search search search away now.... a pile of stick notes to get through, the past is waiting for me and I need to sink into it, got a bit upset, of course, going through everything...

TTFN
Marian