Yesterday, after my mom’s birthday gathering at my parents’ house, I stuck around and told my dad I needed to go ahead and look at the boxes of books he had there in storage that were owned by my aunt. He had asked several weeks ago if I would take a look at them and see if I would like to keep any of them, and I had told him I would, but those kinds of tasks take time. Well, with some free time during Christmas break, I told myself I would get them out and see what of them I could take off of his hands.

“They are in the shed out back.”

We crossed his back yard and went into one side of his shed, where two columns of white document boxes stood behind the door.

My aunt’s books.

My aunt passed away some time in May, 2020, and, a year and a half later, we are opening boxes to review some of her personal affects.

I opened one box, and then another, and as I thumbed through the books stacked in them, I remembered the several days last June when we were in her house, quickly trying to gather her belongings in each room and get them into boxes so that the house could be emptied and cleaned out professionally.

I remembered packing the books into boxes off of her shelves in an office at the front of her house.

That day it was warm and the house was kind of darkish and my face and arms were sweaty and the room had that unpleasant smell and we who were there were working quietly, anxiously, just trying to get things collected as carefully but quickly as possible.

We were all still stunned about her passing on that day, being there, in her house, working.

In two boxes were a collection of hymn books she had collected as a chaplain and as a Presbyterian minister. With them were several versions of the Bible- some copies old, and some, less old- along with some Bible reference books and some dictionaries.

Two other boxes contained her library of cookbooks. She liked her cookbooks.

Three other boxes contained a mix of books she had acquired and kept, ranging from Terry Pratchett comedies and collections on science and some old Kansas readers to an Ayn Rand hardback and sourcebooks for clowning.

While going through one of the boxes, though, I found one of the best books among them- a small spiral-bound notebook- under the lid.

The small notebook, it turned out, contained my aunt’s online accounts’ usernames and passwords.

Which meant it offered us an additional door into understanding my aunt a little better around the end of her life.

One thing I learned about my aunt out of skimming that little book is that she had a lot of affection for her cat.

“Po” in one form or another appears frequently in her passwords.

I brought the bulk of those book boxes home from my parents’ house to go through them at mine when I’d have some free time.

I’ll make some. I need to give her a little attention, at this point.