The job of downsizing is an onerous one, and in our case has consisted of seven carloads of books to Lifeline, a charity which provides crisis support, suicide prevention services and mental health support. We also have taken eight carloads of stuff, we cannot bear to part with, to a storage facility, hopefully as an interim measure until we can find a place for it in our new unit. However, downsizing does have some bright spots. Wading through all the stuff in our house which we have accumulated over the 32 years since we bought it, is, as you would expect, like a trip back in time. I found a couple of letters from my parents, sent to me when I was away at university. I would regularly talk to them by phone and would occasionally put the word on them for some cash to assist with my meagre scholarship. I was fortunate in that they could afford to do so. My scholarship was about $85 per week, and my accommodation and some meals in a university college was about $35 per week, so there was not a lot of money to throw around. The title of this piece ‘Herewith the doings’ is what my father wrote at the beginning of his letter to me. The ‘doings’ consisted of a cheque for a couple of hundred dollars to keep me in pizza, souvlaki, pub counter-meals, beer and journal subscriptions. My parents are both dead now, and I still miss them; however, throughout my life I knew they loved me, and they knew I loved them. I couldn’t have been luckier.
