Winding up

When we were growing up in the 60s and 70s we didn't have the proverbial hill of beans when it came to cash.

This morning I was preoccupied with money from my late parents.

At 8.45 I'm rummaging through the remnant of my mother's (who died in 2001) purse for the correct change for the bus. She lived long enough to see the Euro coming in, but not to remember the meaning of coins. I silently thank her each day for the copper plunder that makes up that elusive five cent for the busman. The hoard is growing thin and I know one morning I'll zip back the cheap nylon zipper and find only the two hair clips and the nail file that lie there in their own little sections.

My sister concluded her duties as executress yesterday when she handed me the last quarter of the proceeds from the sale of our father's house. She worked tirelessly to conclude all the practical and legal work involved. I'm very proud of her as I don't think I would have been able for it.

So I started my day with my mother's few pence, or cent, or whatever we're calling it these days in my fist on the way to the bus, and a bankers draft for tens of thousands wrapped up tightly in a ball in the back of my wallet in my trouser pocket. It reminded me of shopping expeditions from the house at Doyle's Farm after school, when Ma would put a bundle of coins wrapped in a shopping list written in pencil on a piece of copybook paper into my hand and order me to hold on tight as I went to Ballyboden's supermarket and bought up some bread or ham or maybe a few pork chops for the father's tea.

It's far from pork chops he is now. Or shoppng lists either. Or she either.

Dropping the lodgement envelope into the machine in the bank felt like the last nail in their collective coffins. The deed is done. The task is over. We can move on to whatever come next.

What comes next, then?

Somehow, though, it all feels like a very big relieving sigh.