And now the process of winding up Tui and Lionel's lives. The end of an era. Best to get busy and not think about it. We do. We start on Lionel's clothes which proves to be a relatively easy job. Most of them go in the recycling. They're the wrong look for our boys and the wrong size. But I stow away some ties. Too hard to part with, some of them I recognise from childhood. Things we get out of the cupboards stay out. This house is going to get messy. Then I start on the books. I've asked Nic to wait as books are one of my things. I separate into piles...mine and Mark's, and the others. A member of the church congregation comes to look at the organ. Lionel never had music lessons but he loved music and bought himself an electric organ and some music books when he retired. He loved to potter around on it. Never gave up on learning. Education was something he valued highly as couldn't attend school past primary because of the Depression. His family needed him to be out earning. So he supported us in our education, as Tui's father did for his four girls. Ernie Morris was sent to New Zealand in the 1910's at the age of 11 to live with his uncle. His family couldn't afford to educate him and thought he would have better opportunities here. That turned out to be true but he signed up for the army as soon as he could when World War One started so he could get back to England to visit his family. When he got there, even though he was at a camp only 30 miles from home, in Maidenhead, he had to go to the Western Front and earn leave before he was allowed to visit them.
So Nic and I plod through the family possessions. Handling the books exacerbates the tendonitis I have been getting in my wrists from poor ergonomics during computer use. I vow to slow down and be careful. I'm already stretching back muscles which are stiff, and around my right hip. It's 2020 catching up.
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