Life Update

This week my younger brother, Josh, is in the Burstein house in Forest Hills, dealing with some final issues before the closing on the sale, currently scheduled for next week. Today he's meeting the movers, who will remove his possessions and mine; and on Thursday, all of the stuff I kept in that house for my entire life will be moved to a storage unit.

Its an odd feeling emotionally, especially since it's not just my own stuff. There's a lot of family documents I'm taking custody of, such as photographs, article clippings, and letters. Just yesterday Josh found a whole folder of letters that my father wrote, regarding a piece of family history that I had never known about. I had discovered the letters when doing my own clean-up of the house two years ago, and somehow they migrated into one of Josh's boxes. He's making sure they'll be with my stuff, so I can go over them and learn even more about my family.

I have to express how grateful I am to Josh for all the work he's been doing. He helped me with my own packing, and with finding a good moving company, and he's taking care of being there at a time when I can't. Once the house is no longer ours, it's going to be hard to figure out where and when we'll be able to see each other again, but I'm sure we'll manage. Losing our mother has brought us closer in ways that I think both of us appreciate.

And this takes place right in a busy time. Major deadline at work coming up next week, and on Sunday I'll be teaching at the Odyssey workshop in New Hampshire. I'm expecting my first breather in July...