Tony organized a group of us to go over to Mary's basement apartment on Family Day to help clean up. In this picture are Dickie, Tony, Iris' brother (I can't figure out an English name for him still), Iris, me and Tony's friend Brian (sitting).
We each were assigned an area to work in. Dickie and Brian started in the bedroom and I started in the kitchen. Tony, Iris and her brother were in the living room area first, but Tony moved into the bedroom closet later and Iris joined me in the kitchen. We passed things to her brother to either be recycled, given to Goodwill or thrown out.
Mary was like Tony and I in some ways. She liked to "collect" things. If you have a large place it's not that big of a deal. But, if you're confined to a smaller space then it tends to shrink rather rapidly. We all had that problem. I found some rather old food items in her cupboard. Some I'll try to eat. Others weren't worth taking the risk.
Dickie found some neat things. Mementos of her travels through Europe back in the 50's or 60's. That was pretty cool to see. Tony will go through a lot of the things and decide where to send them. Some items will go to her relatives if they wish to have them. Mary wasn't extremely close to many of her surviving relatives. None lived nearby and none were able to make it to her funeral unfortunately.
Tony will try to give other items to different organizations depending on whether or not he thinks they have historical value or some other worth to each particular group. Mary had a lot of different interests from stone carving to painting to sewing and knitting. As well, she was one of the few Asian women in the Canadian military in World War II. So Tony will try to work all that out when he can.
We spent four or five hours there and got through a reasonable amount of stuff. But, I believe there's still quite a bit more to do. Tony thinks we're at least half way through, but I'm not so sure about that. We still have to find a home for her bedroom set as well. Whew.
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