Sometimes staying busy is the best thing to do when something is weighing on your mind.

Since things seem to fall to a son when his father dies, that meant that I have been occupied with helping my mother get things in order. I started last week sorting through his meager possessions.

As I wrote before, he was a simple man, a fact evident in the things that he owned. The biggest thing he had was a collection of cologne and after shave, mostly Old Spice, which seems to be what most people buy older men for gifts. He had at least 10 bottles and probably knew who gave him each. They were lined up in the bathroom drawer like little soldiers. I placed them in a box and moved on to the bedroom.

Even on the day of the funeral, my mother was busy trying to get things moved out of their regular places. I admit, it is a little disconcerting to enter a home where someone's things still remain right where they were left, as if they are awaiting their return.

It's the little things that will get to you, things like the familiar scent of that cologne or his wristwatch laying in a little box still ticking away the time.

Since Dad had been in the hospital for about two months prior to his passing and my mother had been there with him for most of the time, everything was frozen in time. The calendar still said April and his special seat cushion was still on his favorite chair. Since he had been having health problems for about a year, several different machines were needed to keep him at home and able to live a somewhat normal life. He had a wheel chair, a walker, a shower seat, oxygen dispensers and canisters and a hospital bed.

One of the first orders of business was getting those out of the house, where possible, to help keep my mother from seeing them every time she turned around. I packed them away in the building, rather glad when they were out of my sight as well. There was something about the very items that helped him get along that seemed to remind me that he had been so sick to start with. I prefer to wrap my memories in gold, not in the unforgiving green steel of an oxygen tank or the burnished chrome of a walker.

Then I had to go though his clothing, another difficult task. I decided to try to do part of that while some of the family was in so I could give away a few things. I know that's the way he would have done it himself.

I carefully unpacked the neatly folded T shirts, white handkerchiefs and suspenders from his bedroom drawers. I thought about how unlike my own drawers his were—my shirts are stuffed into the drawers almost haphazardly when compared to the perfect rows of clean white cloth I saw there.

His worn black wallet was there on a white T shirt. All that remained were his driver's license and a few pictures of family in a pocket. I put the license in my pocket; I don't know what I'll do with it, but I couldn't throw it away.

There were no secrets to be found, only two old knives, a box of shotgun shells and a couple of blocks of red cedar to keep out the moths that never attacked. I put most of the clothes in a box and gave them to his brother, along with his two pairs of shoes.

In a little wooden box with a train on the lid, I found his wedding band and a few other things, like a pocket watch I bought him 20 years ago that was broken for the past 10. I was touched that he kept it, although it no longer worked.

In the end, I was going through the rest of his clothes in the closet and decided to instead put most of them in boxes to look through later.

It seemed that I could picture him wearing many of the shirts and things and I would feel better if I didn't have to do that right away. In another drawer I found a cardboard box that held his medals, all still sealed in their packages. We had encouraged him to get them back after all these years; some he never actually received and others had been lost or displaced. I recall them coming in the same little brown box in the mail. I opened each one and asked him what they were awarded for; he gave me brief answers as I put them back in the boxes. They hadn't been opened again, from what I could tell. After all was said and done, the entirety of his possessions would fit in the trunk of a regular car. My personal belongings would take a few pickup loads to haul away...something else to ponder later.

Maybe the best thing to leave behind for your family to sort through is a few small boxes of stuff and a truck load of pleasant memories, instead of the other way around.

Sometimes it still seems like he's alive somewhere at a hospital and will be coming home again. Other times, the reality of life strikes with complete clarity, leaving no doubt as to the finality of death. Through it all, I have been most concerned about my mother, who has never lived alone in her life. With the added stresses and strains of filing documents for insurance and settling his estate, she is under more burden than anyone.

My entire family has been very touched by the outpouring of love from folks, some of whom we didn't even know before. Every card, note, prayer, hug and kind word have been very much appreciated.

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