Print Media & Collage

59”W x 42”L

2026

Most kids don’t want their parents’ things. 

My late mother Fern, was a realtor, and she needed help emptying a home of a man named Bob, a WWII veteran and engineer whose wife had also died years earlier. Bob’s two sons lived on the West Coast and wanted nothing from the house,  just to get everything out so my mom could sell it. 

I packed up sixty years of their life. Their photographs, travel souvenirs, Bonsai hobby books, stamps, board games, cocktail glasses, china, jewelry, and beautiful old hats. Objects that told me who they had been. Things that had been used, loved, and held onto—waiting, perhaps, to carry their stories forward.

I use some of Bob’s things now. I remember him, even though I never knew him. I have some of my mom’s things, too. Together they make up my own unruly family archive.

Someday, my kids may have to decide what to keep of me. I hope a few things will still whisper, I was here. I loved this. Remember me.