What I carried

I took a few things back with me. (A few more will be coming in the mail - I sent myself the few books of his I took, and a nice folder-clipboard with the Sigma Xi logo on it - I am a member as was he)

But I carried back his pocketknife, and a magnifier that I had given him some years back, and a piece of banded agate that sat on his desk for years, and a nice Petoskey stone (a piece of fossilized coral; they are a common thing that washes up on the Lake Michigan shore, hence the name), and a couple of t-shirts that were his (and she's also putting aside another one I had mentioned but that we hadn't gotten out)

And this

That's the prayer afghan I started back in 2004 when my dad was going through rounds of diagnoses (ultimate outcome: a very, very early-stage cancer, treated and cured, that wasn't what took him). My mom gave it back to me because I mentioned I would want it if she didn't.

The pattern for it is here. If that's not the exact pattern I used it's essentially identical; I know I used what is sometimes called Trinity Stitch (it's like moss stitch, but in multiples of three, not two)

It's been washed and dried A LOT, I can tell. It's gotten a bit crunchy and I wonder if a few times it was dried on "high" (I wonder if he had it while he was in the rehab center; they tend to overzealously wash things). Doesn't matter; this is not for actual warmth or softness.

She tells me he used it up to the end. (She washed it immediately after; she said she did a lot of cleaning the evening after he died because she didn't know what else to do).

(I hope in the next week I will have some other thing to talk about. I am sure it is boring for people who did not know my dad. But for me, writing about it helps a little; helps me accept that it has happened and process what is going on in my mind and my heart)

She also went through a box that had come from Stauer Jewelry. My dad had ordered a lot from them in the past and she said she figured some of the things in that last order were for me, some were for her, some were for my sister in law. I also noted if there was something that seemed appropriate for my niece (or even to be put aside for when she's older), we should, because I know she loved her grandpa.

One thing she reckoned he had ordered for me (because I like these kinds of oddball things) was a slice of an agate geode that had been encircled with gold and made into a pendant. It's a bright blue and I don't know for sure if it's natural or dyed (some of the geodes, I think the chalcedony ones, can be a pretty bright blue) but it doesn't matter.