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As I am getting older, I will be 60 in 7 months, I find that I am happy to have little on my social agenda. I am retired and I have been very active in the last 3 years with various volunteer jobs. However this summer we had 9 weeks of interminable renovations and then suddenly my father died. I feel like I want to get off the merry go round. I am very tired and not sleeping well. Blame it on too many emotions and memories. Too much to do to sort out my late father’s affairs and belongings, finding the right people to dispose of things, etc. I am not alone in this task, my sister and brother-in-law are also extremely helpful and very well organized.

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It’s mental fatigue more than anything else, maybe a slight depression. Loosing a parent is like a part of us has died.

As I travelled within the City going from the North side of the Mont Royal to the Western Side I criss-cross streets and neighbourhoods between Montreal and Westmount, everything reminds me of my childhood, my old schools, the streets, etc. The Office where my mother worked in Real Estate in Westmount and the stories of houses and people she met. Shops where my father liked to do everyday shopping, restaurants, people he knew, he spoke to everyone. Even the last street he lived on Rosemount, a street of large mansions, he knew all the neighbours, who they were and their family stories, if anyone told him something he would remember it did not matter if the conversation occurred last week or 20 years ago. He certainly had a sense of observation and he knew Montreal.

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Thursday last was the appraiser who took what was going to auction and then Friday the Charity to whom the rest of his belongings went to. The apartment is now empty and I walked around it one last time, it felt very strange. This is what he wanted, he was against expensive funerals and chose to give his body to science and his belongings to charity. We the children respected his wishes simply because it was his will and he would have been disappointed in us if we had not.

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I do not know how much time it will take to put the events of July 2015 behind me. A neighbour told me that it could take several months. My Mom died two years ago this September and I still think of her. I think that with Dad it will be the same, they remain a presence despite having entered the afterlife.

After completing my task at Dad’s apartment I went to the Museum of Fine Arts of Montreal on Friday to see the Rodin exhibit, the museum is on Sherbrooke Street one of the main arteries of Montreal, in the heart of the district my Dad liked so much.

I will write on Rodin and the secret of his Atelier in another post, it was beautifully curated and gave me a new understanding of Rodin the sculptor and how he worked, something I had not seen before in other exhibits.

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