Changes; A Shared Life In Boxes...But If Only Time Could Be Saved In A Bottle.

The inevitable thing about moving to another house is the packing and the subsequent unpacking. There was just so much stuff this time around it is amazing how we collected them over the years. Our possessions.

For me it only actually began 24 years ago after Jeannie and I got married; as a bachelor, I "travelled light". For 22 years, Jeannie and I shared a life which I now can only re-live in a memory that will certainly wane with time. Along the way, the possessions we acquired have their own stories to tell. Many seem to serve as "memory recall buttons" as merely looking at them brings back thoughts that I never knew remained. The photos tell the most; a piece of clothing or jewellery; the hundreds of CDs and the particular songs; the letters we wrote to each other and the greeting cards; documents; certain utensils and so forth; and oh! the knick knacks!

For logistic expediency and convenience during packing, I decided that we put everything that could go into a box, into labelled boxes. Deciding what to pack was like deciding what I wanted to still remember or forget and I wanted to remember everything. They were decisions I could still defer till the unpacking so, virtually everything went into the boxes! Twenty over years of a shared life hastily packed into boxes; a shared life that now seems like it was too hastily lived and yet not.

Just as packing brought memories flooding back, so did the unpacking. It is now time to unpack; the time to choose. Though it is possible to keep everything but I do not want to. Thankfully, functionality and usefulness (or otherwise) of those possessions ensure many choices are made by themselves. As time will overtake time, I have left many decisions to the kids...over time, everything eventually becomes memory.

Trying to hang on to memories that seem locked in material possessions is like trying to save time in a bottle as Jim Croce's song goes. That would be foolhardy as memories fade with time and as memories move backwards, time moves forward. Even if things are written down (like a message in a bottle?), the essence will not be the same.



Just some of Jeannie's clothes



Stuff still in boxes







Even Prince remembers the bag Mummy sometimes carried for rugby outings now used to pack some of her Tupperware.




Time In A Bottle: Jim Croce
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that Id like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
Id save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That youre the one I want to go
Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Ive looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with