Your entire life in 13 boxes...

With the recent passing of Lorne's father, his mother, with Lorne's consent, sent all of Lorne's worldly possessions to me.  Here it is...Lorne's life in 13 boxes that arrived yesterday while I was at work.

My new task is to go through all these boxes and determine what is keepable (I'm not keeping 13 year old clothing) and what isn't.  I don't even think that Lorne knows what is inside these boxes...certainly after almost 13 years, his recollection would have been diminished anyways. 

At this point I have gone through 2 boxes and managed to find a ton of t-shirts, lots of legal documents, some amazing photos of Lorne when he was a child growing up (lots of school awards and newspaper clippings as well) and cutest of all...a hand crocheted Tigger...down to the curly, springy tail! Once I get through all these boxes, I will need to organize them a bit better and repack them so that when the time comes and Lorne does get out of prison, then they will be waiting for him.

I hope it will be sooner rather than later.

Death in Prison...

Well, that which I feared has happened.  Lorne has lost one of his parents while he was incarcerated.  There are many things that would make people go "well, it was bound to happen..." Yes, it was.  Death is a natural part of the life cycle; as a Witch, I know this.  The part that saddens me is that it was Lorne's father, a man with whom Lorne has an extremely long and contentious relationship with.  So much of the man that Lorne, is today, good and bad, are as a direct result of the influence that his father had on him.  And trust me, it was no small influence.  His father brought out the worst and the best in him.  The last few months of his life, Lorne's father, I believe was trying to reach out to Lorne and apologize to him for all the pain he had caused him.  I truly believe that Lorne's father did love Lorne, deeply, but was one of those very flawed human beings who were unable to show true love, tolerance and acceptance of their child but did so in a very controlling and demeaning way.

It's sad really, that Lorne's father did not know how to show such emotional kindness to Lorne.  The funny thing is that Lorne has adopted many of the same traits as his father, but Lorne doesn't seem to see that.  Lorne had told me stories of how strained his relationship with his father was and how it developed over the many years.  For Lorne, I can't imagine what it must be like to lose a parent and not be able to attend to their funeral or take over those duties that a child should when a parent passes.

As for Lorne, I am deeply saddened that he will no longer be able to heal the relationship with his father.  The only option left open to Lorne is to forgive him and I don't think that is in the cards.