Ahhhh the smell of a well groomed Artdog, of course that would be Koko, OR a visual delight by one of our favourite artists Connie Sabo, OR the fantastic meal prepared for us by the magic hands of Vaklav, I’d have to say the New Year is starting off nicely.

The mashup of 16 images just start to tell the story of things involved with moving Mom’s things, finally from Burnaby to her home here. We kept the apt., even though we knew she liked it here in Strathcona, just to make sure it was the place to make her heart sing. To be honest it was a bit of a reprieve for me as 3-4 year in construction took a toll on me and it wasn’t easy to handle “EVERYTHING”. 2020 took us all for a loop so why not start of 2021 with cleaning up things we probably should have 6 months ago.

With family busy dealing with their own things it ended up that friends crawled out of the woodwork to help and share in the joy of getting an ugly, hard and not so fun job done! It ended up being a joy. Let’s just call those wonderful people guardian angels who swoop in when you need it most — a non human counts too ie. Artdog at her best. We ended up giving away alot of furniture that just didn’t fit into Mom’s new pad and the best part of that is it went to friends and/or friends of friends; people who needed it and appreciated getting it. There is nothing more satisfying than when that happens. The extra bonus was instead of taking money we asked people to just drop of a box or 2 to Sally Ann/ Good Will/ VGH thrift store… This was the best idea! It made the whole experience aa win win situation.

It’s always nice when things fall into place and it felt like my Dad’s spirit was guiding the whole efficient quota of the apt. unload. My goal was to have 90% of the apt. cleaned out by Jan. 10th to 15th. We ended up achieving that by Jan 10th, Dad would have loved that! He was a no nonsense personality and considering he was born in 1919 one can kind of understand it. Who had time for fluffy touchy feely stuff (not that there’s anything wrong with that) when you survived WW2 almost died on Palm Sunday and walked home from Germany when the war was over? Add a little immigration (not settlers, the new age lingo) to a country where you can’t even speak the language after running across the boarder just to have a “better” life and make your way across the country to make a living. Hmmmmm, ya I’d say no nonsense fits into that make up.

Well this friday, January 15th, will be 20 years to the day that we lost our no nonsense man of the family. It’s still amazing to me the times I feel his spirit is guiding me, helping me or just there. The move of Mom’s apartment was just one of those times. When we loose a loved one I believe we have to live just a little bit harder to celebrate their memory. This friday, Mom and I plan to work from morning ‘til night, at least 12 hours, to celebrate Dad’s time on this planet. He once said to me, after I had told him I was tired as had worked 8 hours, “Ya, and what about the other 4?”.

Hahaha, he never expected more from someone than he expected of himself. I think his spirit will be happy and smiling down on us as we work away for 12 hours — send us your good vibes that we can make it!!