Cleaning out more than I bargained for

This weekend I took on a task that I have been putting off for many months. To be honest, it is probably a year of procrastination.  The IM training has kept me busy and I have neglected a few items around the house.  Well, to be honest again,  I preferred training over household chores.  So my task was the garage, I committed myself to cleaning out the garage.  I got two boxes out , one for Goodwill and one for the trash.  As I went through things I came across a lot of stuff that was my Dads.  Things like parts of his train collection, his CDs and diskettes from his computer. Lots of books from circa 1950 about TV and Radio repair.  I was very reluctant to get rid of his stuff.  There was absolutely no reason to keep a book on TV repair that had no mention of integrated circuits.  The schematics showed no transistors but lots of electron tubes.  Technology had left these devices in the past and here I was holding onto these books.  I think I was afraid to get rid of them because as long as I held onto them,, it was a connection to Dad.   It really tore at me to throw these into the Goodwill box.  There was no way that I could have put them in the trash.  I think, knowing that someone else might get some use out of them,, I was okay with things.  I did hold onto one book that Dad had from his army days.  It was like the other books, obsolete but in the front page, Dad had written his name.  I hung onto that one.  He wrote his name there and it was more of a connection to him.  I thought that cleaning up the garage would be sort of therapeutic,, to finally have this not hanging over my head, but in truth, it was an emotionally tough job.  I still have several boxes here to go through that all contain Dad's stuff and then,, I have his house, workshop, shed and house in East Texas to go through.   It is all good though. I like thinking about my Dad.  I miss him.