There was quite bit of fog this morning as I crossed over the Peace River into Punta Gorda for a stop at the funeral home to pick up death certificates for my aunt.  She was cremated last Thursday and taken to the cemetery yesterday.  I tried to go by there this afternoon, but they’ve closed the road for construction.  I wasn’t sure exactly how to detour my way there so I came back to the hotel and looked it up online.  I’ll go by there in the morning before I leave town.

I spent about 5 hours going through her things once I got to her apartment.  I wasn’t looking forward to this chore, but it had to be done.  I had figured it would take a couple of hours, since we got rid of most of her belongings when she moved there in 2006 from her mobile home.  But I spent more than five hours going through everything.  I put aside several notes and things I found that she had saved.  I’ll post a few of them when I get home.  I’m not even sure where they are now… but boxed up in the trunk of my car.  Some are jokes she saved and some are just lists of things. 
I’m leaving her furniture and some of her clothes that they can share with some of the residents who don’t have much.  The people that run the place where she lived were very good to her and very nice to me. 

I also spent some time taking care of some banking business and trying to track down a safe deposit box.  I thought it was in one bank, but they had no record of it.  So I found it at another bank.  The box was empty.  I couldn’t remember if we had cleaned it out on a previous visit or had left something in it.

Here’s something I found in one of her drawers.

There must have been a dozen hairnets in that little package.  20 cents!  One can only guess how old that is.

It’s sad for all the obvious reasons but also sad for me because I won’t have a reason to come back to this area that I’ve grown to really like.  Certainly not as often as I have in the past.  Bye bye Port Charlotte.  

Hey, I could ride Charlotte down and take her by the place where I adopted her.  I was hoping to do that this year with my buddy Mel.  Dang!

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