"The Business"... my parents

Though my father was a New York City Firefighter, he always had something else going on the side. There were several businesses that came and went, but through it all my parents had one business since 1969... "The Business"... gifts for firefighters... which started out as a mail order business and they also set up at a couple of conventions a year selling their stuff. (The fire department has always been the center of our lives... I will miss the firemen. They were always a second family to me.) Sometimes we went on the business trips with them and worked for them. Our family vacations were almost always tacked onto a business trip.

Through the years, as my sister and I got older and were able to stay alone for a night or two, the conventions became more numerous. After we got married and moved out, the mail order/internet part of the business wasn't doing very well so they mostly did conventions. They traveled a LOT... almost all the time except for a couple of winter months. We still joined them at the larger conventions (well, that stopped once we had kids), but most of the conventions were small enough for the two of them to handle on their own. After my sister and I had children, my parents got other family and friends to work for them at the larger conventions.

The only move we ever made when I was a child was when I was in second grade. We moved 5 houses down the block onto the corner of a main street so they could set up a showroom in the garage. My father was in charge of buying most of the stuff they sold, and he bought a lot of stuff and then seemed to forget about some of it. Or maybe it was bought and put away for investment purposes... we really aren't sure.

Anyway, since my mother put her house up for sale, the family has been trying to sort through all the STUFF from the businesses. Forty years worth of STUFF.

Some of it my mom was able to sell to other vendors, other stuff was given away, some thrown out, some put on eBay and Craigslist. At the same time as "The Business", my father had gone through some other businesses... the one that stuck around the longest was sports memorabilia, which is half of the STUFF which we found.

The showroom in the oversized double-garage was built by... well I'm not sure... probably my father (with help). False walls were raised and a drop ceiling was installed. The basement is huge and many, many selves were built, plus there are metal shelves bolted into the cement walls.

All this stuff needs to go before my mom moves out. The job is much too big for my DH and BIL to do... so mom had to hire someone to do it. They start demolition tomorrow.

Yesterday, we all spent the day at my mom's cleaning out the last STUFF from those 40 years of "The Business" that my parents worked so hard on... to provide extras for my sister and I.

The last bits of ALL their hard work is in the den in boxes or on the front porch waiting to be given away... the walls and shelving my father put so much hard work in to building years ago will be broken down and put into a dumpster (which will be delivered tomorrow morning) in my mom's driveway.

It was a difficult day yesterday... but we were so busy that it didn't really HIT me... until today. It was just nagging at the back of my mind all day yesterday - it never really surfaced till this morning, when I decided I just had to write this post.

I was 3 years old when they started "The Business"... so it is part of every childhood memory... every memory of my father... every day of the 38 years of my father's life that I remember was centered around the fire department and "The Business".

The last physical remnants of my father's life will be torn down and put in a dumpster by tomorrow night.

I am very sad...